If you’re a band releasing an album or planning a tour these days, you’ve got to get creative. Ohio duo the Black Keys took “creative” to bizarre new heights over the weekend.
To promote their upcoming album Turn Blue, out May 13, they uploaded a strange, David Lynchian video to YouTube, which is apparently supposed to put you in a subliminal trance and potentially make you buy the Black Keys’ new album. Several other infomercial-like spots popped up on the channel last week.
Further, the video’s announcement came via Mike Tyson’s Twitter, for some reason:
Turn Blue https://t.co/N7SaVjl1eD
— Mike Tyson (@MikeTyson) March 21, 2014
As has been pointed out, this isn’t the first time the duo has taken social media marketing and promotion to head-scratching territory. Their video for “Lonely Boy” was equally weird, and engaged an audience: It currently has 32 million views.
Drummer Patrick Carney has been teasing the album on his Instagram with a series of “blue” references, including a few Arrested Development photos of Tobias’s failed Blue Man Group audition. This is the brave new frontier, where promotion of an album is now a puzzle for people on the Internet to solve.
The single “Fever” is scheduled to be released this afternoon, but has already surfaced online.
Screengrab via Turn Blue/YouTube