I’m ridiculously excited about this.

Not just the announcement that Yeasayer is coming out with a 13-song-strong new album Amen & Goodbye on April 1, and will accompany it with a tour, or the fact that their new track “I Am Chemistry” is everything I want from a new Yeasayer. It’s hypnotic and future-forward, yet flows like the glowing innards of a lava lamp. It sounds EXACTLY like a Yeasayer song: layers, harmonies, clever shifts. Well done. But you can rely on Yeasayer. They’re industrious.

But no, what I’m also excited about is their new video. When was the last time I ever wrote that? And I’m of the generation when music channels actually showed them, and good ones, too. *grandmotherly sigh*

I love Yeasayer’s embrace of visuals. Or rather, that visual art is in the spinal fluid of their music. In their songs, it’s like you’re settling in to hear a movie, and watch a music. Their album releases have always been creative – goo-filled clips, album art on newsprint, scavenger hunts and glow-in-the-dark remixes. It’s a sensory experience, and there’s few bands who can pull it off without seeming childish like the Flaming Lips, or who amble into the territory of waxed-mustachioed, pretentious artwank. When it works, though, I’m reminded of – and rewarded with – something like the expansive, graphic novel universe Mars Volta created with both their music and and the video for “Televators”, or the eerie work of the Brothers Quay.

In this new clip, “I Am Chemistry” by Mike Anderson at New York’s New Media Ltd, they’ve realized and animated the supernatural landscape created by New York-based, Montreal-born artist David Altmejd, with whom Yeasayer have landed a dream collaboration for this album. Altmejd created pieces that evolved to the songs on the new album, as he listened to them, and these will be showcased in later releases. You can see teasers for these pieces here: http://www.yeasayer.xyz/

The coolest aspect of the “I Am Chemistry” video – not just the fact is that it’s wonderfully batshit insane  – is that with its plasticene-y, stop-motion characters that New Media seems really great at, it compliments and brings to life the weirdly beautiful, sometimes disturbing and ornamental worlds and personalities that Altmejd creates with his artwork. Flowy bodies and faceless heads, dancing mesmerized. He treads on blurred lines, uses artifacts, humans and otherworldly creatures, and flips between smaller details and grand statements. This all works so perfectly with Yeasayer’s music.

So, basically, gimme. I want more. Hurry up April, fools. \m/