OK Go Hire Big Brains for "This Too Shall Pass" Video: Watch a Clip

Rolling Stone has documented OK Go's woes regarding viral video — their label's new policy regarding embeddable clips has made it difficult to land another treadmill smash — but the crew hasn't given up. The video for "This Too Shall Pass" from their latest disc Of the Blue Colour of the Sky will premiere Monday, March 1st, and it will indeed be embeddable. In the meantime, they're offering up sneak peeks behind the high-concept clip in a series of outtake reels.

The premise for the new video? "Nerds + Rock Band." The crew teamed up with physicists from Synn Labs — folks who work with a little organization called NASA — and big brains from MIT's famous Media Lab to construct some sort of Rube Goldberg machine in a Los Angeles warehouse that measures two stories high. What the machine will do remains a question. But so far we know this: "I am a bigtime nerd lover and most of my friends are mega-geeks," frontman Damian Kulash says.

Check back on March 1st for a second video that'll lead you to the full clip.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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