Oh, nothing, just the first OK Go app.

Say The Same Thing is a brand new game hand-coded by Andy, beta-tested by the band, and ready for use as an addictive 21st century mindmelding tool by you and your friends. To explain, Tim & Damian hugged it out in ridiculous costumes.

Download it for free from iTunes or the Google Play Store.

And for a limited time, log in and play live against a member of OK Go. Damian, Tim, Dan, and Andy will be on the other end of their phones at various points in the immediate future, ready to compete.

Sometimes, the never-ending quest to Make Stuff entails Going Places. And, in this case, the never-ending quest brought Tim, Drea, and Damian rather far afield, even by OK Go standards, to northern Sweden and the outer rim of the Arctic Circle, where the source material for the latest Stuff was the Northern Lights.

The result is a brand new PYYRAMIDS track which–alongside Tim and Drea–features Damian contributing a track of radio transmissions, naturally, plus drums, synths, arrangements, and a traditional Swedish nyckelharpa. Watch, listen, learn, vibe out, dig on Damian’s sweet fur hat, and be happy it’s not minus-20 degrees where you are.

For this month’s playlist, we enlisted Tim and his PYYRAMIDS bandmate Drea to put together something special in honor of the release of their album Brightest Darkest Day. The result is a vibey springtime mix including some of the band’s musical influences and personal favorites; hope you dig it.

Click here to listen to the playlist on Spotify.

“The Headmaster Ritual” – The Smiths
“Don’t Go” – PYYRAMIDS
“Speed Trials” – Elliott Smith
“Dizzy” – Siouxsie And The Banshees
“Under The Earth” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
“Castles in the Snow” – Twin Shadow
“Tape Song” – The Kills
“Down By The Water” – PJ Harvey
“Ghetto Love” – Spinnerette
“Hunter” – Björk
“Paper Doll” – PYYRAMIDS
“The Walk” – The Cure
“Ecstasy Ghost” – IO Echo
“Doe” – The Breeders
“There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” – Dum Dum Girls

MAY

It’s back to the super-secret stash of unreleased covers this month for a totally burning rough instrumental cut of “Nite Klub” by the second wave ska act The Specials. Listen closely and you can hear Damian singing the words live in the room. And just as we’re not sure what ska-wave we’re up to currently, it doesn’t matter that Damian’s vocals never made it to the final mix, because the theme of this recording is DANIMAL IN YOUR FACE. Turn it up and dance. And feel free to sample the living beejeezus out of the five-count-’em-five drum breaks.

As James Brown said: give the drummer some.

Here’s what Dan remembers about the session:

I remember playing “Nite Klub” to a click, which was difficult because of the momentum and solo-ish-ness of all the breaks. Fun as hell, though. You can kind of hear that I was having a blast. I remember I was trying to channel a gospel rave-up church band kind of vibe. Like something from Blues Brothers.

past months
download at okgo.net/free

APRIL

Where we come from, the celebration of spring is marked by the tradition of driving-around-too-fast-with-open-car-windows. To celebrate, this month’s Unreleased mp3 of the Month is a cover song from one of the great drive-around-too-fast-with-open-car-windows albums of all time, The Breeders’ Last Splash. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to do the same. Within all local speed limits, of course.

Here’s what Damian has to say about it:

I spent a lot of high school listening to The Breeders’ album Pod, and so I bought Last Splash the day it came out. It was the end of the summer before my senior year. Those songs will always feel like summer to me, and with today being the first t-shirt outside day I’ve had all year, it feels like the right time for a throw-back.

MARCH

March’s song is a piping fresh song recorded with Dave Fridmann in Fredonia called “I’m Not Through.”

The reason you have the opportunity to hear this song is because we, OK Go, are working with the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi on the 2013 edition of their Music Video Challenge. Put another way: until we finish this album we’re going to be too busy making music to make a video of our own, so we want you to make one and share it with the world. There’ll be a panel (including Damian) to pick the best, and the winner will be invited to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity in June. There’ll be a People’s Choice winner, too, and a website compiling all the submissions. You can learn more here.

FEBRUARY

Celebrating the Season of the Tim (new PYYRAMIDS album en route!), Tim recounts the recording of his unreleased demo, “Make Up Your Mind”:

“Make Up Your Mind” is a demo that was recorded sometime between our first and second record. I recorded the song in my bedroom while sharing an apartment in Chicago with our former guitarist Andy Duncan. Andy did a lot of the programming, played keys, and a wonderful slow and melodic Duncansian guitar solo in the middle of the song. The solo always kind of sounded like George Harrison to me.  “Make Up Your Mind” was written for a friend who was having really difficult relationship problems with her boyfriend at the time. She was incredibly confused by him because he didn’t know whether he wanted in or out of the relationship. She told me he voiced his confusion with lines like, “I mean we’re just two really different people, you like to drive a car and I like to take the bus and ride my bike.” I really wanted to use that line, but couldn’t figure out a way to make it fit rhythmically. But man, I tried. Anyway, I felt bad for her and wanted to try to cheer her up with a song.

JANUARY

The series begins appropriately with a demo from 2004 called “This Thing Has Started” that might sound familiar to some of your ears. Here’s Danimal to explain it:

 This was recorded right around the time we were getting ready to record our 2nd record, Oh No. We recorded quite a few of those songs (including “This Thing Has Started”) at Damian’s place in LA in the summer of 2004. We set up the drums right in the center of his living room and tracked for I think about ten days with Ken Sluiter engineering the session. He’s a great friend and engineer we kept from our Chicago days. I remember getting hooked on coffee that session. I had never really drank coffee until then and remember being amazed by the caffeine jolt I got from it. I knew then exactly what everybody was so damn excited about when we’d take breaks for Starbucks while on tour.

There’s a Brightest Darkest Day coming.

Specifically, today.

If you pre-ordered the shiny new PYYRAMIDS album, today is the day when Paracadute benevolently drops it into your iTunes, your streaming platform of choice, your home stereo, and/or your life, like a piece of evolutionary knowledge deployed from a passing mothership.

If you didn’t pre-order it, have no fear, supplies are hardly limited. Except for the cassette. You’ll probably want to order that soon if you’d like a copy. There are only 300. On the whole planet.

Needless to say, we’re all pretty elated.

Brightest Darkest Day is available digitally via iTunes & on cassette via Paracadute at PYYRAMIDS.com. Because hey, cassettes.

The band hits the road this week for live shows in the US and Europe and very much hope to see you there.

Tour Dates
4/10 New York, NY – Mercury Lounge, 6:30pm
4/11 Philadelphia, PA – KungFu Necktie, 8pm
4/15 Paris, France – Point Ephemere, 8pm
4/16 Paris, France – Club Silencio, 8pm
4/17 London, UK – Shacklewell Arms, 8pm
4/19 London, UK – KOKO Camden, 10pm
5/2 Los Angeles, CA – The Satellite, 9pm
5/7 San Francisco, CA – Brick & Mortar Music Hall, 8pm
5/11 San Diego, CA – Bar Pink, 9pm

If you follow Damian’s Instagram feed, you might notice occasional virtual postcards from upstate New York. That’s ’cause the band has been making periodic trips there to work on their still-in-progress/still-untitled/still-no-idea-when-it’s-coming-out-or-when-the-band-is-touring-please-stop-with-the-questions-always-with-the-questions new album.

Even so, we do have an answer for probably that most frequently asked of questions: when’s the next video coming out?

Answer: whenever you finish it.

Here’s Damian to explain why the band is giving away a brand new unreleased song.

The song is called “I’m Not Through.” There’ll be a proper panel of judges (including Damian) and the winner will be screened at the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase in Cannes, plus a People’s Choice category. A thousand pardons for the bit in the small-print requiring that contestants be over 18. If you’re under that age and would like to participate, please do. Post your video to the band’s Facebook wall and we’ll totally watch it.

Oh, right, and you can listen to the (brand new, unreleased) song right here. If you’d like it as an mp3, it’s available as part of our 12 Months of (Rare, Unreleased) OK Go, which you can sign up for over there to the right and above.

Dragon bicycle by Austin Bike Zoo.

1. PYYRAMIDS

Tim, Drea, and PYYRAMIDS have an awesome new album coming out super-d00per soon via Paracadute called Brightest Darkest Day. They brought the band to Austin to preview their freshest jams. The cassette (and mp3s) are available for preorder now.

DJ Spooky, along with Ms. Amanda Palmer herself, showed up for the PYYRAMIDS DJ set.

2. Andy and His Rock-Hard Apps

Meanwhile, resident OK Go-bot Andy transformed between his various forms, leading a panel called Activists, Rockstars, and Start-Ups, which featured the legendary aforementioned DJ Spooky. He also announced a brand new app coming this spring from Paracadute.

3. Damian Waxes Smartypants

Damian drank juice and talked with some very smart people at GE’s Brilliant Brunch.