OK Go have resurfaced with their first new music in years, releasing the single “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill” alongside an intricate new music video. The track is the lead single from their upcoming fifth studio album, And the Adjacent Possible, set to arrive later this year. This marks the band’s first full-length release since 2014’s Hungry Ghosts, following a decade marked by ambitious side projects and sporadic musical output.
The video for “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill” is characteristically inventive, aligning with the band’s history of pushing the boundaries of music video production. Directed by frontman Damian Kulash and filmmaker Chris Buongiorno (Star Wars: Skeleton Crew), the visual concept features 64 smartphones arranged in a mosaic, each playing coordinated video clips. Shot over eight days and compiled from more than a thousand takes, the final product condenses over two hours of footage into a seamless display.
Kulash explains the concept as a reflection of modern digital life: “Trying to balance the anxiety (which is just realism) with the hope (which is just necessary) can often feel like living in a split screen,” he said. “Instead of using digital wizardry to glue multiple videos together, we shot one video for each of several dozen phones and laid them out as a mosaic. A single image emerges from all these separate pieces working sometimes in harmony and sometimes in discord.”
Watch the video below:
Lyrically, the song grapples with the challenge of maintaining optimism in uncertain times. Kulash cited Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” as an inspiration, while acknowledging the difficulty in holding onto that belief. “Looking at the world unfolding before me, and especially before my children, it’s hard to find that kind of faith,” Kulash shared. “What do we tell them? That’s what this song is about: trying to be honest but keeping your head up at the same time.”
The new album arrives after years of creative detours for the band, including Kulash co-directing the 2023 film The Beanie Bubble for Apple TV+, and their educational initiative OK Go Sandbox, which uses their videos to teach STEAM concepts in classrooms. The band’s meticulous approach to video production and their non-traditional career path have earned them widespread acclaim, with their work featured in the Museum of Modern Art and honours that include a Grammy Award, multiple Cannes Lions, and Smithsonian’s Ingenuity Award.
In addition to the album, OK Go will embark on a 14-city North American tour this spring, starting April 24 in Milwaukee and concluding June 21 in Vancouver.
Photo credit: Piper Ferguson
Share this : 
The post OK Go Return with First Album in Over a Decade appeared first on Montreal Rocks.
Source: Montreal Rocks – Read More
