Clap Your Hands Say Yeah will forever be symbols of the promise of a new era of viral music distribution, and their new video for “Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth,” commemorating the 20th anniversary of their self-titled release, is a wink to that status. Releasing their debut with no label, they shocked the music world with rapid success run on pure word-of-mouth, heralding a new age of music made popular by innocent buzz—not record label schemes—and a beautiful internet that was in support of that purist enterprise.

Their new video features the engine that drove that buzz—the single ”Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth”—and in many ways it could not be a more fitting thematic match to the brief golden age of independent music that survived on the now-broken promise of a creative internet unworried by clicks. The music industry story behind Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s s/t release now files into the mournful genre of nostalgia. But the new video is a reminder of the pure joy in that tale, and the way the off-kilter and unleashed songs on the debut captured that ethos.

The mere release of the new video echoes the buzziness of the debut because everything about it is just plain odd. It’s not just a video for a single released two decades later. What stands out even more is that the song sounds like it could have been written today—making it both eerie and timeless. Also weird: The passing on of the song was clearly no algorithm-generated fluke, but the sharing of music that people genuinely found great and different. The YouTube comments for the video echo similar energy.

And then there’s the video itself. It features an odd day in the life of up-and-comer comedian Eric Rahill working as a computer tech guy. He’s equally engaged in the spaghetti western duels of customer interactions—skeptically sizing up the intent of an old woman bringing in a camera to fix—as he is in a strategic Discord interaction with a love interest. Between fixing old iMacs and large portable video cameras, he builds hype for this romantic meetup with well-placed emojis and clever questions like “I’ve never asked…you into music?” Like the undeniable joyful groove of the song, the online banter jumps him out of his mundane tech repair existence.

There is something surreal in the band’s decision to release the video cold-turkey. Initial viewer questions might be: What and why does this video exist, and what is going on in it, anyway? The video itself is equally surreal, invoking a sci-fi premise that seems pointless but also functions as a fitting bridge between decades. The tech-for-repair brought into the shop, like single-purpose digital cameras, is all from the era of the original debut, but the selfies the tech-guy takes on them seem possible only in the vain frames learned from decades of living out fantasies on the post- “like and retweet” web.

The video ends with a bit of suspense: we see the protagonist staring down the Discord chat to see how his date will weigh in on their meetup. Likewise, as fans, we wait to see what’s going on with this re-release—genre remixes, acoustic stripped-down crooners, liner notes of oral histories? The buzz is back.

words by Michael Mannix

pre-order Clap Your Hands Say Yeah self titled 2005 debut album, available as limited deluxe reissue HERE

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