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[awesome video alert] Stepdad team up with Hannes Johannes on ‘Pick & Choose’

Swedish-born and UK-based tandem Hannes Elltorp & Johannes Helgelin are developing quite a reputation for their animated music videos. Currently unveiling a series of rad and raunchy clips for Team Spirit — we featured “Fuck The Beach” last week — Hannes Johannes this week gave us this adventurous clip from Michigan electro pop band STEPDAD, the finest track off last year’s Wildlife Pop LP.

The connection between the Scandinavian animators/directors and Grand Rapids’ pop bandits is no coincidence. In 2011, Ayad Al Adhamy, then of Passion Pit, drove to Ypsilanti to catch Stepdad play a gig, and eventually signed them to his Black Bell Records label, which issued Wildlife Pop a year ago this month. As Al Adhamy moved on to Team Spirit, he enlisted the video help of Hannes Johannes, who a few years prior had created an animated short for Passion Pit’s “I’ve Got Your Number.”

But beyond awesome animation, and seeing a cartoon version of Ultramark — which is beautiful destiny at work — it’s great to get a proper video for “Pick & Choose,” a blippy, kaleidoscopic synth-pop gem that’s as catchy as it is cool. There was a lyrical video floating around for the past year, with people singing along to the track while sitting on a coach, but this is much better.

That chorus … it’s candy on the earlips. In fact, much of Wildlife Pop rules the school.