“From the beginning we wanted to make something borderline absurd,” admits director Nick Kraus, of Turbo Fruits‘ new, yes, borderline absurd, and totally hilarious new video. The video, for the driving, easygoing cautionary tale “Don’t Let Me Break Your Heart Again,” gets the National Geographic treatment for with the Nashville band donning animal costumes and duking it out for—what else?—the love of a girl.
“I know the band pretty well so [I] picked out each animal costume, and everyone went all in. King [Brock, guitar/squirrel] had crazy eyes and twitchy tail action, Dave [McCowen, guitar/elephant] was smashing trees left and right, Jonas [Stein, vocals/guitar/penguin] was waddling and flapping his wings at every opportunity and Matt [Hearn, drums/bee] discovered something hidden deep within himself,” explains Kraus, who’s been best friends with Stein since age 6.
The video was shot during a hot day on the Stein family farm, and had some, naturally, pretty wild inspiration. As Stein explains, “I had talked with Nick about making a music video, so we started brainstorming and decided we wanted to focus on having fun and making ourselves laugh during the whole process. Turbo Fruits would play four wild animals competing over the same female—a bloody, gory love story. The live shots were filmed in the bottom of a dried out pond with beautiful weeds encompassing the whole pond floor. Aside from being in sweaty costumes in 100 degree weather for nine hours, it was one of the most fun videos we’ve ever made.”
http://youtu.be/sZUQV8MT69g
“We had a very loose narrative, shot it in full on one very hot day. I remember laughing all day and then laughing some more when we reviewed the footage, like when we poured fake blood on King, Matt and Dave, and ants started crawling all over them because that stuff is basically colored sugar,” agrees Kraus.
Turbo Fruits are readying the release of their fourth record, No Control, out April 20 (and, natch, accompanied with special Turbo Fruits release day rolling papers) on Melvin/Thirty Tigers. Catch the band on tour, including a few stops at SXSW.
Turbo Fruits tour dates
March
13 – Vinyl – Pensacola, FL
14 – Spanish Moon – Baton Rouge, LA
15 – Club Dada – Dallas, TX
16 – Fitzgerald’s Downstairs – Houston, TX
SXSW
17 – KLBJ Party @ Maggie Mae’s – 12 AM
20 – LiveVibe Day Party @ Little Woodrows – 1 PM
20 – Thirty Tigers Showcase @ Lucky Lounge – 9 PM
21 – Panache Party @ Spider House – 3 PM
21 – Manage This! Showcase @ The Parish – 10 PM
April
9 – Baby’s All Right – Brooklyn, NY
10 – The Saint – Asbury Park, NJ
18 – The Basement East – Nashville, TN
