Exclusive Video Premiere: The Black Lips' Animated Psych-Out "Short Fuse"

When Rolling Stone chatted with Black Lips drummer Joe Bradley last month, he said that on 200 Million Thousand (due out Tuesday), the Atlanta garage-rock band would be playing Miss Cleo and doing a little prognosticating. "We're predicting the future," he said. "Just general predictions, like violence in Europe and the assassination of a figurehead." But the cartoon video for the album's "Short Fuse" — which Bradley directed — looks back to the past, according to Chris Taylor, who animated the psychedelic clip. " 'Short Fuse' is an homage to American and Japanese cartoons from the '60s and '70s," he says. "The series of events in the video are a literal representation of the song's lyrics."

The video is packed with retro charm, and is indeed quite literal (the lyric "Hey, Mr. Postman" is accompanied by a mailman). There's marching sticks of TNT, a cracked-up Humpty Dumpty flying through trippy squares of color and even little cartoon versions of the band — click above to check out it out, and if you're sensitive to seizure-inducing Japanese anime, beware around the three-quarter point.

Rolling Stone's newest critic, Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump, reviewed 200 Million Thousand in the new issue, writing that the sloppy punks honor their garage heroes like the 13th Floor Elevators and New York Dolls on the LP. When RS previewed the disc, we noted the album's awesome combo of chunky riffs and ragged howls — and that "Body Combat" features a snippet from a song recorded in France in 1860 that may be historic. "I think it's the first song ever recorded," Bradley said. "[Guitarist] Cole [Alexander] found it on the Internet, and he liked the 'woo-woo' sound."

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Song Stories

“The Pretender”

Foo Fighters | 2007

This song wasn't part of the planned track listing for 2007's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, and was put together in a day. "It happened after we recorded a lot of stuff," said Dave Grohl. Yet it ended up as the album opener and the lead single. Grohl called it "a stomping Foo Fighters uptempo song with a little bit of Chuck Berry in it." The singer hinted at the lyrics' political overtones: "Everyone's been f---ed over before and I think a lot of people feel f---ed over right now and they're not getting what they were promised."

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