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

February 20, 2009 2:57 PM ET

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."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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Song Stories

“Push It”

Salt-N-Pepa | 1987

Originating as a B side to their cover of the Stax classic “Tramp,” Cheryl “Salt” James, Sandi “Pepa” Denton and Dee Dee “DJ Spinderella” Roper came up with the goods on this career-making, Grammy-nominated platinum single about working it on the dancefloor. “Push It” has been sampled and spliced to death since it debuted in 1987, yet the original track is as fresh and fly as when SNP — among the few original women of hip-hop — debuted it. “Most men will never believe ‘Push It’ was never about sex,” said James. “And that’s why the record went to Number One,” said Denton. “Everybody thought it was about sex.”

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