Nick Offerman Directs Tweedy’s Star-Studded ‘Low Key’ Video

Right on the heels of the release of their first album, Sukierae, Tweedy unleashed a quirky, cameo-filled music video for their track “Low Key” that takes a lighthearted poke at a troubled record industry. Directed by Parks and Recreation‘s Nick Offerman, the video highlights the alt-rockers’ DIY ethic while demonstrating some unusual efforts to sell the album.

The video begins with the snappily-dressed father-and-son team stepping into a meeting with a music executive played by John Hodgman. “The recording industry is in the toilet,” they’re told, and they’ll have to market, promote, distribute and sell their own record. And so they take off on a motorcycle built for two, going door-to-door to try sell their record to a series of indifferent homedwellers including Melissa McCarthy, Conan O’Brien and Andy Richter, Mavis Staples, Steve Albini, Chance the Rapper and Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche. The video also features a pair of kittens and a sinister ending involving a greedy monkey.

Offerman told The Wall Street Journal that he and Jeff Tweedy have kept in touch since the Wilco frontman’s appearance on Parks and Recreation last spring, and he hopes to collaborate with the family band again. “Getting to work with the two of them and getting to see their rapport as father and son, as well as bandmates, was really quite heartwarming,” he said. “I left that weekend with a pretty solid crush on both of them.”

Tweedy first premiered “Low Key” on Rolling Stone at the end of July and Tweedy Sr. spoke about the song’s autobiographical roots. “Sometimes you hear songwriters say they wish they’d written someone else’s song, implying that songs are out there and it’s just a matter of who gets there first,” he said. “I’m pretty sure this one was meant for me.”