POPSCREEN: !!!

The latest video from inscrutably-named indie-dance combo !!! is for the song “Yadnus,” an unearthly blues-funk groove with nonsensical lyrics, a relentless beat, a wailing refrain, and a guitar attack so furious it threatens to tear the song apart. The video opens with white-lipped, disembodied singing mouths, framed between shots of roadkill that’s been strewn across the velvet-black surface of its natural habitat. As if viewers weren’t visually stimulated enough, the director guides the audience to random shots of two of !!!’s members sporting pairs of nifty sunglasses. The video makes it clear, though, that !!! isn’t just a band that knows how to rock—they’re also a band that knows how to raise the dead. Necromancy isn’t really popular subject matter in the music video world, but lead singer Nic Offer produces the exception that proves the rule when the song’s pulsating beat leaves even the roadkill singing along. The fun, however confusing and uncomfortable, doesn’t end there. The boys catch a ride in a phantom Fiat (because what could be more bizarre than a spectral European compact car?), and fly high above a landscape coated with strange dancing women atop bales of hay. No, ladies and gentlemen, this is not your brain on drugs, this is your brain on !!!. The decision as to which one is healthier is up to you. —Ryan J. Meehan