LTTS Exclusive: OK Go Talks Charity, Videos And White Knuckles

In 2006, the band OK Go released a video for their hit song “Here It Goes Again” featuring an elaborately choreographed dance on treadmills directed and choreographed by Trish Sie. As of this printing, the original video upload for “Here It Goes Again” has been viewed over 50 million times on YouTube.

Their latest video, White Knuckles, raised money for animal shelters in America.

The band is composed of Damian Kulash (lead vocals and guitar), Tim Nordwind (bass guitar and vocals), Dan Konopka (drums and percussion) and Andy Ross (guitar, keyboards and vocals).

LookToTheStars.org was pleased to speak with Tim Norwind from ‘OK Go’ in an effort to learn more about this unique and innovative group of artists who also have a soft spot for dancing with dogs.

What percentage of your success do you attribute to going viral on You-Tube?

Certainly it’s a large part of how people have come to know us. In the sort-of ‘major label model’ of doing business there wouldn’t be a value to the recording of a song without everything else – marketing and promotions and advertisements. The nice thing about the way our career has gone is that we make a lot of different things that all kind of point to one another, we view all the different things we make as having separate value. Of course, music has been the epicenter of all our projects, but that’s sort of the business model that’s working for us.

Has YouTube replaced MTV for artists?

I don’t really draw distinction between it and real life – the Internet is where so many of us do our business and make our art now. Replace MTV? I don’t know, they don’t even play videos anymore so I think a lot of people go to YouTube because it’s a space where they can find videos. And YouTube, you know, its culturally very different than MTV, but it does seem to be the way the world is going at this moment.

Through the use of various mediums – innovative videos and live shows – do you think you’ve possibly created two different fan bases?

We have a very large and varied audience. Some are traditional type fans who come to the live show and buy the record or people who just view on-line. It’s varied, and we have a very creative fan-base that have a very creative relationship with us. We make things and tend to get very creative responses from them – many of our fans like to recreate our videos, or remix our songs, so we’re very lucky to have this sort-of 21st Century audience that exists everywhere."

In reference to your ‘White Knuckles’ video – which reminds people to support animal rescue – how did this idea come to fruition?

We’re in a fortunate position where we get to make videos exactly how we like to, we don’t have any advertisements for the songs – they are their own core projects, so when you look at video-making that way, you start to think what would be a funny thing to spend a few weeks doing? One idea was to have a dog theme because we thought it would be great to spend a few weeks with a group of dogs and make a magical dance with them. It was just a very exciting concept to us, period. We all love dogs and dancing with them.

What other causes do you guys support? I know you contributed a track to the Dear New Orleans album and Tim, you and Damian joined the American Cancer Society to promote More Birthdays?

Yes, Damian and I sang happy birthday. Really, there are a lot of causes. If you listen to our music, I don’t think we are overtly political, but we are human beings and concerned citizens of the world and only do things we care about in the world, we are open to champion for things that are important to us.

Other artists who inspire you by example, not musically, but on a personal level?

It doesn’t stop at artists, there are a lot of scientists and technologists, and artists. Lately our hero’s have been in the science and technology fields.

What can we expect to see in your next video?

We have a new video we’re doing with a bunch of guys from the MIT Media Labs, it’s an animated video so we’re not even in it, and it’s an animation where we play with food – that’s all I can tell you – it comes out November 8.

LookToTheStars thanks OK Go for their awesome videos and the opportunity to talk to Tim Norwind.