Music Existence Because of Music, We Exist
To celebrate the release of its new album, Hungry Ghosts (Paracadute/BMG), OK Go devised a myriad of interactive activities – from dedicated interactive websites for the first two videos, “I Won’t Let You Down” and “The Writing’s On The Wall,” to a remix contest with Blend to forays on new social media platforms. Now the GRAMMY®-winning band is inviting fans to come join the party in person. OK Go is known for its highly interactive live show and the group’s 2015 spring theatre tour promises plenty of surprises. Tickets are on sale now for the outing, which will kick off on March 21 at The Warfield in San Francisco, include a show at New York City’s Terminal 5 on April 11 and wrap up at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on May 2. See below for itinerary; tickets can be purchased HERE.
In the meantime, fans can catch OK Go performing on CBS’ “Late Show with David Letterman” tonight, November 11. The band recently premiered the official video for “I Won’t Let You Down,” the second single from Hungry Ghosts, during a visit to NBC’s “TODAY.” By the following day, the single and Hungry Ghosts had jumped to No. 1 on iTunes Alternative Singles and Alternative Albums charts in Japan, where the video was shot. The clip – directed by OK Go’s Damian Kulash and Kazuaki Seki, with creative direction by Morihiro Harano (of Mori, Inc.) – racked up 10 million views in its first week of release. It has been added by VH1, Fuse, MTV Hits (where it was “Hit of the Week” last week) and AXS TV and can be viewed HERE at the newly launched “I Won’t Let You Down” interactive website. Band members Damian Kulash and Tim Nordwind talk about how this intricate and massively ambitious video was conceived and shot in this behind-the-scenes video.
“The alt-rock band ascends to new heights of eye-popping complexity with their new video for ‘I Won’t Let You Down'” said Rolling Stone while Indie Wire praised the clip as “a refreshing, vigorous burst of cinematic energy, referencing everything from Busby Berkeley’s spinning geometrical fever-dreams to the wild happiness of Bollywood dance numbers to the lyrical outpourings (and downpourings) of ‘Singin’ in the Rain.'” Entertainment Weekly noted, “The video’s dancers open and close their colorful umbrellas as the custom multi-copter camera spins around them, collecting both aerial and street-level shots. The result is a mesmerizing, uninterrupted shot of umbrella-assisted choreography.”
OK Go recently received the Future of Music Honors Award from the Future of Music Coalition, which recognized the band’s innovation, creativity and commitment to helping policymakers understand the new music economy. The band has already been honored with a GRAMMY, an MTV Video Music Award, a CLIO, two WEBBY Awards (including one for their collaboration with The Muppets and Sesame Street), a spot in a Guggenheim installation and a total of seven Lions from the 2012 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity – the advertising world’s most prestigious competition.
With a career that includes award-winning videos, New York Times op-eds, a major label split and the establishment of a DIY trans-media mini-empire (Paracadute), collaborations with pioneering dance companies and tech giants, animators and Muppets, OK Go continue to fearlessly dream and build new worlds in a time when creative boundaries have all but dissolved. Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller famously called OK Go “the first post-Internet band, the first band to use the internet as a medium of art, not just commerce.”
