The quirky music video for the song Zeroes & Ones by California-based indie rock band Baby Seal Club is full of chickens pecking at beet-filled human figures in a tiny faux Apple store. The song (which I think is pretty great) is from their upcoming album titled Default World, due out in summer 2012. The video was conceived & produced by Fudo, Wizzbang, Olava & Uncle Stabby.

Wizz Bang, the band’s Chief-Chicken Wrangler, described the video’s shoot in detail at the Baby Seal Club website:

I have raised many birds from egg to adulthood and one thing I’ve discovered along the way is that the baby chicks really enjoy eating the shredded vegetable fiber that shoots out the back of our big juicer. Being a somewhat macabre chicken-wrangler and verified horror flick fan, I noticed that the beet fibers looked a lot like viscera and guts – the amazing reddish color, the stringy consistency, and the hard-to-identify-on-film quality of the stuff thus sparked an idea. I began feeding them the stuff everyday as a “treat,” so they would become good and hungry for it when it was time to be on the set.

An advance copy of the CD is available now:

The music video for Hell No by Brooklyn-based band CHAPPO was directed and produced by Brandon LaGanke & John Carlucci of Ghost+Cow and features creepy singing mustached boobs (and other oddities). The band says it’s “NSFA” (Not Safe For Anyone).

This humorous video montage titled OBEY created by Everything is Terrible is made from found footage of singing Christian children. Good news.

TED has posted the brilliantly hilarious talk and performance by Reggie Watts from this year’s conference.

Reggie Watts’ beats defy boxes. Unplug your logic board and watch as he blends poetry and crosses musical genres in this larger-than-life performance.

Reggie Watts creates unpredictably brilliant performances on the spot using his voice, looping pedals and his giant brain.

Ash Ruiz, a former member of Latin boy band Menudo (1990s), has launched his solo “electroganic” pop music career with Burn (One Love), a song that addresses the 2012 Burning Man ticket situation (it encourages people without tickets to “create the experience” at home). Los Angeles-based Ruiz is a past participant in the annual Burning Man festival. Here is a rough cut preview of the music video for Burn (One Love) from his 7-song debut EP titled Electric Innocence. The final video, which is directed by Elevate Films founder, Mikki Willis, will be posted by Ruiz on YouTube on June 12, 2012.

From the press release on PRWeb:

Despite Burning Man Festival’s efforts to create a smooth ticketing process for the 2012 late-summer festival after last year’s sold out festival crashed online ticket sales, this year’s lottery system instead created an unprecedented crisis. The massive desert lake-bed festival, capped at 50,000 people by contract with Nevada land management authorities, relies on experienced veteran attendees (called “burners”) each year to create the extensive fusion display of art and music. The lottery system failed to account for that need, and thousands of essential veteran burners have been unable to secure tickets for the approaching sold-out festival.

Ash’s Music Video for his original song, “Burn (One Love)”, addresses this with an up-tempo invitation for those who cannot attend the festival to create the experience in their own homes and communities. Given that the Burning Man culture has always encouraged people to bring its ethos of joyful – and responsible – human expression out from the desert and into mainstream, Ash’s video works to visually create what that can look like. Ash says, “When people watch this video, I want them to be inspired to live everyday like the fabulous creative beings they are!”

Ash Ruiz at Burning Man

Ruiz is also looking for band members to “rock the planet with electroganic vibes”:

via Joseph Pred

images via Ash Ruiz

photo by Blake Boston’s mother

Scumbag Steve is a persona of Blake Boston, a man whose MySpace picture was made into an internet meme in 2011. The photo shows Blake (then a high school student) standing in a hallway wearing a backwards cap. Unbeknownst to him at the time, redditors made up an entire character named Scumbag Steve by adding white blocked text to the photo that, as described by Know Your Meme, “centers around unethical behavior regarding drugs, partying, and other hedonistic behaviors.” Later, his trademark hat became a submeme as people began photoshopping it to other images using similar captions as the original meme. When Blake first discovered his image was all over the internet, he was hurt but later embraced what was happening and adopted the meme as his own.

In May 2012, according to TechCrunch, a Brisk Tea ad campaign featuring his memed photo began running on Imgur. He also began starring in a weekly web music video series titled Scumbag Thursdays as an effort to launch his rap music career. His debut video titled Scumbag Steve Overture currently has over 2 million views on YouTube.

Team Laughing Squid recently met Scumbag Steve at The Webby Awards in New York City and became part of his latest music video titled Dirty Girl. In the video, there are cameos of PRGuitarman (Nyan Cat creator) Brad Kim (Know Your Meme), Shira Lazar (What’s Trending), our own Scott Beale and David Klass, and yes, yours truly. For the record, Blake isn’t a scumbag at all. He’s a really great guy.

video by Ben Lashes

Scumbag Steve (Blake Boston) & David Klass at The 16th Annual Webby Awards

Chris Torres (PRGuitarman), Ben Lashes, Scumbag Steve (Blake Boston) & David Klass

photos by Scott Beale

Scumbag Steve (Blake Boston) & Rusty Blazenhoff

photo & text by Scott Beale, photo memeification by Ken Dashner

More information about the Scumbag Steve meme can be found at Know Your Meme.

In addition to his work as an electronic musician, Moby is also an amateur architecture photographer. He posts his photos on the Tumblr Moby Los Angeles Architecture Blog. He recently spoke about his architecture hobby to Jessica Bennett of Tumblr.

via Tumblr Storyboard

photo by Moby

Stockholm-based Kollektivet Livet created Use Condoms, a music video for a song created by using the sounds of condoms. It was filmed by Yosef Elkelany and was originally created as an ad for Swedish sex advocacy group RFSU, but was never used.

via Doobybrain.com

photo by Makenai

photo by Blake Maloof

Jeri Ellsworth created this awesome Commodore 64 bass guitar for last weekend’s Maker Faire Bay Area. Ellsworth explains how she made the guitar and how it works in this MAKE:Live video recorded at Maker Faire. (skip ahead about 40 seconds to the start of the interview).

via Waxy.org

The latest music video by Hot Chip was created for their song Night & Day. It features guest appearances by Reggie Watts, Terence Stamp and Lara Stone. In 2010, we posted Hot Chip’s music video for I Feel Better. Both videos are directed by Peter Serafinowicz. Night & Day is from Hot Chip’s forthcoming album titled In Our Heads and it can be pre-ordered on vinyl or through iTunes.

via Slacktory

gTar is an iPhone-powered electronic guitar that is designed to be played by anyone, regardless of their musical ability. The heart of the instrument is a docked iPhone running the gTar app. The app includes a library of playable songs—LEDs on the fretboard can guide a novice player through each song. The gTar can even mute incorrect notes. The gTar is being developed by California-based Incident Technologies. Incident founder Idan Beck and his team are funding the first production run of gTar via Kickstarter.

via TechCrunch

Lazy Harp Seal Has No Job, a music video by Parry Gripp based on a Japanese nature documentary about harp seals.

via io9 & Deep Sea News

The 16th Annual Webby Awards is hosted by Patton Oswalt and will be streaming live in HD tonight on webbyawards.com. The livestream is also available to view on iOS devices via The Webby Awards mobile app. The Red Carpet starts at 4:30 PM ET and The Webby Awards Show commences at 5:30 PM ET.

Tune in to the live online broadcast to see:

*Appearances from this year’s Special Achievement Honorees Louis C.K., Björk, Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Juliette Lewis and Graydon Sheppard from Sh*t Girls Say

*Hallmark 5-Word Speeches from your favorite Webby Winners

*A can’t-miss special musical performance from Passion Pit

*Plus many more surprise guests as we honor the best of the Web

“Let’s Go for a Ride”, the latest song by Pomplamoose from their new EP Hey It’s Pomplamoose.

Will Smith was recently a guest on the BBC talk show The Graham Norton Show where he raps The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song along with keyboard accompaniment by Gary Barlow.

via Tastefully Offensive

I am visiting New York City for Internet Week New York and spotted this Beastie Boy Adam “MCA” Yauch tribute mural by CRAM Concepts on East 7th Street in the Village. It reads “Just Me, My Posse… And MCA…”.

photo by Rusty Blazenhoff

This astonishing paper craft stop motion animation is set to the song “Østersøen” by the band Ödland. The animation was directed by Vincent Pianina & Lorenzo Papace.

via Colossal

Funny or Die managed to get a copy of a leaked poster for Coachella 2013. The line-up look amazing!

Treadmill Accident by Parry Gripp

In 2011, St. Louis musicians Pokey LaFarge and The South City Three performed an NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert, a delightful three song old-timey set at the NPR Music offices. Pokey and the band are currently on tour and are featured on Jack White’s debut album Blunderbuss.

LaFarge writes and performs original, sometimes traditional music steeped in American blues, country and Western swing from the days when 78s ruled the record player. Watch him perform a short set at the NPR Music offices, with the help of his band The South City Three.

Zuckerberg: The Musical! is a short musical created by the talented folks at New York City-based cdza. The musical chronicles the life and times of Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg starting in 2004 when he left Harvard and started Facebook.

Singing – Lora Lee Gayer, Tess Soltau and Ryah Nixon
Piano – Michael T.
Directed by Joe Sabia

Filmmaker James Winters, with his wife, kids and nephew, created this tribute video to the late Adam “MCA” Yauch. It’s a music video for Sabotage by Beastie Boys but it’s awesomely recreated with children. For comparison, here’s the original video starring the Beastie Boys.

via The High Definite

This 3-year-old boy from Norway woke up from his backseat nap rocking out to the song Territorial Pissings by Nirvana. His older brother, photographer Esteban Reyes, and his sister blasted the music from the front seat of the car and made this incredibly cute video of him.

The last time we woke him up in the car, he got so grumpy and cranky. And since he loves this kind of music we just had to try a new method. I think there are parents that can recognize this scene.

via Gawker and Tastefully Offensive

Game of Thrones theme song by Camille and Kennerly Kitt

Identical twins Camille and Kennerly Kitt are known as the “Harp Twins” and perform awesome covers of familiar songs on their harps including the Game of Thrones theme song, Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Guns N’ Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine and more.

More information from their website:

As the world’s only known identical twin professional harpists, Camille and Kennerly have a passion and flair for arranging and performing contemporary music for Harp Duet. The Harp Twins perform on identical statuesque 6ft 3in (1.9m) Concert Grand Harps as well as identical modern ebony Electric Harps. The twins were trained classically but their true musical love and passion is playing rock, pop, hip-hop, metal, country, New Age, jazz, alternative, and crossover genres. Camille and Kennerly are known for their remarkable duet harp arrangements of songs by artists such as Lady Gaga, Guns N’ Roses, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Pink Floyd, U2, Journey, Taylor Swift, The Cranberries, Rihanna, Coldplay, The Beatles, Britney Spears, Enya, Johnny Cash, OutKast, P!nk, Deep Purple, The Smiths, Elton John, Joy Division, and many more. The twins also arrange and perform a jukebox of Broadway, Video Game, and Movie Soundtrack hits. In addition to being prolific arrangers, Camille and Kennerly compose and perform their own original pieces for Harp Duet.

via Geeks are Sexy

photos by Anthony Yoon

Back in April, the Copenhagen Phil orchestra surprised commuters with a classical concert on a Copenhagen metro train. Amazingly, the crisp audio in the video was actually recorded on the train. The surprise performance was produced in collaboration with Danish radio station RadioKlassik.

Thanks to Morten Legarth for the tip!