We are very excited to announce a brief run of summer shows in July. We will be visiting Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Nashville! Tickets go on sale to the general public THIS FRIDAY at 12pm CT, but you — loyal subscriber to our email list — can access pre-sale tickets on Wednesday at 12pm CT using a code we will email to earlier that morning.

We will be joined in these 3 cities by our friends Winona Forever and Mirthquake. Doors will open at 7pm local time and music will begin by 7:30. These bands rock, so don’t be late!

Shows

This is a picture disc. It plays music and looks awesome at the same time. You need This. Will we ever run out of “this” puns? Probably not.

Side A has the studio recording of our new song “This” and Side B features a live performance of “This” with a symphony orchestra. It’s pretty spectacular. We’d call it a Double A-Side record if the jacket didn’t already say Side B on it.

In stock and shipping now!

What is OTBCOTS you ask? It’s this . Our internal communications are full of abbreviations like this. Songs on this record include TTSP, IWYSBICB, WK, BFK, WTF? (actual title, not shorthand), and N/G. Anyway, we recently blew through a very short run of this pretty 180-gram lemon pressing, so we made more. This is probably it for this variant though (no “this” puns intended), so get it before it’s gone.

Also in stock and shipping now!

This is the day The Beanie Bubble has officially dropped. You can now stream it in over 100 countries on Apple TV+, or if you live in the US, Canada, the UK, or Ireland, you should try to go see it in a theater. It’s the most fun that way, and it’s the best way to hear our brand-new song in glorious Atmos audio on a sound system so good you can practically smell the pungent funk of Tim’s bass playing.

If it’s not playing at your local cinema, we apologize on behalf of the directors and invite you to direct your comments to Barbenheimer.

We love you and we’re happy that some of the world still has the self respect to communicate with words.  And we have big words to share:

THERE IS A NEW OK GO SONG IN THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s called “This” and you can hear it right now.

Some of the new-fangled social media types in our orbit are concerned about the title “This.” We’ve heard the phrase “search engine optimization” bandied about. What they don’t seem to realize is this (pun intended): the internet is organized alphabetically, so everyone who listens to “This” will be guided straight into  “This Too Shall Pass.” We’re certain of it. And that is how you win in the modern music industry. Take that, naysayers.

Speaking of the modern music industry, check out this cool visualizer that we made, with the help of Jeff Desom and Steven Meizler.

Why now? Well, the song was written for The Beanie Bubble, the film Damian co-directed with his wife Kristin which opens in theaters in LA and NYC today(!) and hits AppleTV+ and 100 more theaters in just one week. MovieWeb just called it “one of the best films of the year,” and Deadline says it’s “razor sharp…smart, engaging, eye-opening.”

Here’s how Damian described the song:

I wrote the song “This” about Kristin, my wife and co-director, and about the unexpected places we find fulfillment. It’s about how heaven is the glow in the margins around the everyday patterns of family life. But it’s also the victorious anthem we needed for the closing moments of our film. After almost two hours of a musical journey through twentieth-century pop music (which is like the most satisfying mix tape of all time, for me personally), we needed the final beat of the film to bring viewers back to the present day. Our fable about the American Dream is over, and as the lights come up we want you sinking into that bittersweet-victory flavor of nostalgia. That’s the feeling we want you to leave the theater with.

So there you have it folks. BRAND NEW MUSIC is finally here, and there is lots more where that came from to share with you soon.

Love,
OK Go

(Lambchild Superstar is our free new VR experience. If you have a gaming PC and a wired headset, immerse yourself ASAP.)

DOWNLOAD IT NOW

I Am A Lambchild

A Letter from Damian:

I caught the coronavirus early, when there were only six known cases in California, all of them hundreds of miles from L.A., where I live. My symptoms lasted forever, but were only genuinely scary for a day and a half. My wife Kristin’s battle was tougher, though. She was only briefly at the hospital, but bedridden with breathing problems for a long stretch. As she convalesced, I struggled to keep up with our two-year-old twins, and there were times when her breathing was so labored I worried she just wouldn’t wake up.

We’re extremely lucky. She made a full recovery, and though the kids did have symptoms, they never got much worse than a nasty cold. My heart aches for those who haven’t had the same luck, who are suffering unimaginable loss and hardship, whether from the virus or the havoc it’s wrought on the world.

For all of us, the future has gotten scarier and more unknowable, and it’s bearing down on us faster. But for me, as this new strain of anxiety has spread, it’s brought an incongruous companion: a new breed of hope. It’s subtle and diffuse, but in the moments when the anxiety lets up, it’s there, hovering in the periphery of my consciousness.

At first I thought maybe it was a psychological defense; with Kristin teetering on the edge of the unthinkable, my brain was throwing me life rafts. Then as she and the kids got better, the hope felt like an offshoot of my personal relief. Then I read an essay by historian Rebecca Solnit, The Impossible Has Already Happened: What the Coronavirus Can Teach Us About Hope, and she put words to the thing I was struggling to identify.

When the status quo evaporates, anything is possible, for better or for worse. Crises are when we learn who we are. Without our frame of reference, we reinvent ourselves. Our best and worst impulses struggle against each other anew, and while our darkest fears become more real, so do our wildest hopes. “Change is not only possible, we are swept away by it.”

Solnit makes the case that this is as true for our society as it is for ourselves: Governments have made changes which were unfathomable only a few months ago. Ireland nationalized its hospitals. Canada and Germany have figured out forms of basic income. Thousands of non-violent inmates have been released from the US’s broken prison system.

My neighborhood, like many around the world, raises a cheer for frontline workers every evening. The ritual is more than just a show of gratitude, it’s a vehicle for the kind of hope Solnit writes of, the subtle feeling I was trying to pin down. We’re telling each other we believe in one another. We’re reassuring ourselves that human goodness is rugged, that our capacity to care for each other is less fragile than our individual bodies, that we can choose compassion for others over the comfort of our routines.

Inspired by this cheering, my bandmates and I, working separately in our homes, wrote and recorded a new song, “All Together Now.” We borrowed a lovely metaphor from Rebecca Solnit’s essay: society is, for a moment, liquid in the chrysalis.

The idea that some good may come from this time of overwhelming tragedy is a light in the dark right now. We’re not delusional; we don’t think optimism or compassion alone will get us through this tragic pandemic, nor do we think the better angels of our nature are predestined to be victorious. But as we wrestle with anxiety, every drop of hope is precious. We want to nurture it and share it.

Stream “All Together Now”

Mercedes-Benz EQ challenged Damian to create a piece of art that could change the world.  To the surprise of no one, Damian delivered with the Stress Inversion Transformer. It debuted at SXSW in 2019 and now it’s available for your viewing pleasure.  Remember to wear your helmet, lest your precious mind be blown.

Directed by Damian Kulash Jr and Kristin Gore
Produced by Joe Faulstich
Cinematographer and Editor Geoff Shelton
Special Thanks to Sander Argabrite
Thanks to Your Heaven Audio and Steven Klein’s Sound Control Room for their help figuring out how to make the Stress Inversion Transformer.

Sometimes it’s nice to slow down and appreciate “The One Moment.” Ripley’s thinks so too and will be sharing our process this Sunday at 9/8c on the Travel Channel.

https://www.travelchannel.com/videos/the-one-moment-5533654

Yeah, you have an OK Go t-shirt (or 20). Sure, there’s a poster of us on your wall. But you know what you don’t have? What you never realized you always wanted? What we’ve got for you to show your love? PINS. 

Put ’em on your cube or your clothes. Add ’em to your backpack so other hikers/commuters/students know how much you love us (and how much we love you). Be the trendsetter you know you are.

Thanks to Fast Company for including the band in their 2019 list of “Most Creative People in Business.” It’s a real honor to be included amongst so many other legends.

https://www.fastcompany.com/most-creative-people/2019