The Yeah Yeah Yeahs fight for screen time with look-a-like fans from all over the world in the video for their new single, “Cheated Hearts.” The group handpicked 25 clips out of about 100 submissions for the video, which frontwoman Karen O describes as “the most amazing way to connect with our fans. They really rose to the occasion.” A handful of complete submissions can be viewed on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Web site, as well as the final video.
Karen’s personal favorite moments in “Cheated Hearts” include “the Italian crew, in the bathtub, and the little girl with a machete,” she tells Billboard.com from Australia, where the group is on tour. “There’s a little girl from Seattle who came inherently closest to what I do onstage. She had the microphone in her necktie and was twiddling her hands.”
Karen says the current round of shows have been “some of the best” the band has ever played, and that the trio is reveling in the process of evolving material from its new Interscope album, “Show Your Bones,” which was recently certified gold in the United Kingdom. Two tracks that have gone to a new level on stage are “Phenomenon” and “Turn Into.”
Of the former, she says, “In the beginning, we try to whittle it down in sort of an old-school Yeah Yeah Yeahs style. It’s really raw for the first half and does its own thing in the second half.” The latter “comes across really differently live. It has this sing-a-long vibe to it. It has taken on a life of its own.”
And while plans aren’t yet finalized for what the band will undertake once its international tour wraps Sept. 3 at the U.K.’s Electric Picnic festival, there is a new song in the pipeline. Karen O recently teamed with Peaches and Johnny Knoxville to record “Backass” for the film “Jackass: Number 2,” which opens Sept. 22 in U.S. theaters.
“Peaches and I got together because she was in L.A. at the time and we just whipped out a little tune that makes you want to smash heads,” Karen says. “We got Johnny to sing at the end of it. I don’t know if you’ll hear it in the movie unfortunately, but he’s quite a crooner.”
The first single from the “Jackass” soundtrack will be “The Joker & the Thief,” from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Interscope labelmate Wolfmother. Knoxville and various cast members are shooting a video with the band this week in Australia, directed by the Malloys.
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