ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Put Damian Kulash and Tim Nordwind in a room together and you can tell they've been friends for decades.
TIM NORDWIND: So now we sit in the sound booth, smiling.
DAMIAN KULASH: Trying to drop truth.
NORDWIND: Yeah, yeah. Loving Charlie Brown and Snoop.
KULASH: You want some science? - 'cause here's proof.
NORDWIND: (Laughter).
SHAPIRO: This went on for a while, as we had some technical difficulties connecting their studio in Culver City with mine in D.C.
Hello.
KULASH: Hey.
NORDWIND: Hello, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Oh, you can hear me. Great. Amazing.
KULASH: (Chanting) Ari...
SHAPIRO: Hi.
KULASH: (Chanting) Ari, Ari.
NORDWIND: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Hi.
NORDWIND: Hi.
SHAPIRO: I now know what it sounds like if OK Go tries freestyle rap, and I don't know that I would encourage you to move in that direction.
(LAUGHTER)
KULASH: Challenge accepted.
NORDWIND: Yeah, really. How are we supposed to get better?
SHAPIRO: For your next album...
(LAUGHTER)
SHAPIRO: I wanted to talk to Kulash and Nordwind, the founding members of OK Go, about their current album, called "And The Adjacent Possible." It's the band's fifth, and their first in more than a decade.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A STONE ONLY ROLLS DOWNHILL")
OK GO: (Singing) I wish I could say it would all be all right.
SHAPIRO: I started by asking them what it was like to get back into the studio after so long.
NORDWIND: I remember feeling kind of burnt out and spent from the several years of touring and videomaking that we had done in the past. And the basic idea that we had to kind of counteract that was, let's get back in the studio. We love being in the studio. We love writing music. Let's just remember what that feels like. And so I remember just feeling almost relief to be back in with Damian and writing again.
KULASH: We've also - we didn't mean for it to be so long. We...
NORDWIND: That's true.
KULASH: All of our records have been spaced out more than you would plan if you were trying to run a good career...
(LAUGHTER)
KULASH: ...Because we keep on - we make these elaborate videos which take months, and we tour for months on end, and we're not the quickest writers in the world. But all of that was compounded this time by - Andy, our guitarist, and I both had children, and neither of us wanted to be away from home when they were, you know, in their infant and toddler years. And then there was this pandemic, which you probably heard about. And you wind up on the other side going, like, where did a decade go?
(SOUNDBITE OF OK GO SONG, "ONCE MORE WITH FEELING")
SHAPIRO: When I meet up with people who I've been friends with for 30 years, sometimes we sort of revert a little bit. Is that your dynamic? How would you describe the way you all relate to each other?
KULASH: I would say that Tim and I have never progressed, so there's nothing...
NORDWIND: Right.
KULASH: ...To revert to.
SHAPIRO: OK (laughter).
KULASH: We met when we were 11, at an art summer camp called Interlochen. And he was there for theater, and I was there for visual art. And...
SHAPIRO: Interesting that neither of you was there for music.
KULASH: We got it wrong even then.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
NORDWIND: That's right. That's right.
KULASH: Yeah. I actually did start going for violin, but I didn't have the patience for all the practice, and I realized that I loved painting and drawing more. And so I was painting and drawing. And that actually - sort of my way into music was wearing headphones while I was painting.
SHAPIRO: Wow. Tim, what do you remember about that 11-year-old meeting?
NORDWIND: Oh, gosh. I remember I really needed it. I was so homesick. It was a two-month-long camp, and Damian was my first real friend that I made there.
KULASH: Only one. Only one since.
NORDWIND: (Laughter) Basically, like, one since. I do remember, even though neither one of us were really musicians at the time, we certainly bonded over our love of music, especially the musical "Les Mis." It was, like, "Les Mis," Run-D.M.C...
KULASH: Run-D.M.C, "Pretty In Pink" soundtrack.
NORDWIND: "Pretty In Pink" soundtrack.
KULASH: Yeah.
NORDWIND: Yeah. What I remember most is us just talking about feelings. Like, we just wanted to feel everything back then. And I feel like that is very much true today.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONCE MORE WITH FEELING")
OK GO: (Singing) Let's take it from the top once more, with feeling.
SHAPIRO: So over the nearly 30 years that you've been a band, and you've grown up and changed and taken on all these new projects and done these new things, do you feel like the sound of music that you're making has evolved and grown and changed? Or do you see a really clear through line from the OK Go of the late '90s to what you're putting out now on this album?
NORDWIND: I definitely think, if you look from Album 1 to Album 5, we have certainly evolved. What's interesting, though, is that Album 5 feels like a return to pre-Album 1 or something like that. I mean, this actually feels like the most comfortable in our skin, I think, we've ever sounded, in a lot of ways.
KULASH: Yeah. I think it's hard not to be conscious of trying to plant a flag when you're making art for a living. How are people going to listen to this? What are people going to think about this? What's it going to mean in culture? And this is the closest I've ever felt to, like - our flag was planted a long time ago, so we don't have anything we need to prove to anyone or show to anyone. It's just, here's what we make.
NORDWIND: I totally agree. It's almost like we forgot that maybe we were supposed to prove anything (laughter) in a way.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A GOOD, GOOD DAY AT LAST")
OK GO: (Singing) What a good, good day it is. What a good, good day at last.
SHAPIRO: Tim Nordwind and Damian Kulash of the band OK Go. In another part of the show, we'll hear about their decades of making elaborate, one-take music videos. Their new album is called "And The Adjacent Possible."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A GOOD, GOOD DAY AT LAST")
OK GO: (Singing) What a good, good day it is. What good, good day at last. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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