Rock music has a long history of bands changing the way they sound.
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In a three-piece band like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, each component is essential. Nick Zinner’s guitar provides the spacey and noisy textures behind Karon O’s magnetic voice and vivid personality. Propelled by the pounding indie grooves of drummer Brian Chase.
But as Yeah Yeah Yeahs entered the studio to record their third album It’s Blitz!, Zinner brought along a vintage synthesizer. The synth gave him a new color to paint with and brought Yeah Yeah Yeahs closer to the danceable art-punk tradition of Talking Heads.
The album’s second single “Heads Will Roll” begins with Zinner’s hazy keyboard swells before Chase enters with a disco beat. It feels ominous. Chase’s backbeat suggests a good time. But the synth foreshadows a bad ending to the story.
Then Karen O explains what happened on that fateful night.
No One’s Going Home Alive
The goth banger aims for the club. On “Heads Will Roll,” Karen O sets the grisly scene as youngsters go out for the night. Like any great horror story, the warnings are all there. And reliably ignored.
Glitter on the wet streets
Silver over everything
The river’s all wet
You’re all chrome
She sings, The men cry out. The girls cry out. Oh no! If a Stephen King novel were to take place at a rave, this is how it would go: Dance, dance, dance till you’re dead.
Dripping with alchemy
Shiver stop shivering
The glitter’s all wet
You’re all chrome
This Is Thriller
Richard Ayoade directed the music video. In the clip, a werewolf dances on lighted squares—referencing Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and “Thriller.”
The possessed werewolf begins attacking everyone at the party. Instead of blood, red glitter spills from their bodies. The band cannot escape the violence, and they end up splayed across the dance floor.
Cut in pieces like her bandmates, Karon O continues to sing with a severed head and torso.
At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, “Heads Will Roll” received a nomination for Best Breakthrough Video. (Matt & Kim’s “Lessons Learned” won.)
Looking glass
Take the past
Shut your eyes
Realize
A New Sound
Yeah Yeah Yeahs had evolved on It’s Blitz! and they weren’t the only band flirting with ’80s-inspired new wave.
In 2004, The Killers released one of the year’s biggest albums, Hot Fuss. “Mr. Brightside” sits atop a rock drummer playing a dance beat. Singer Brandon Flowers sings about jealousy and the moment he finds his girlfriend cheating on him.
The synth-heavy track echoes hits from the ’80s—dialing up the earnest intensity.
But Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ synth rock keeps closer to the punk disco of Blondie. And Karen O’s description of the murder scene at a dance club uses dark irony in its plot. Avoiding the self-seriousness that occasionally accompanied the garage revivalists in the early aughts.
A New Map
“Maps” may be their defining song. But “Heads Will Roll” is the band’s most-played track on Spotify.
According to producer Nick Launay, the band constructed most of the songs in the studio. He told Hit Quarters, “They only had a few songs they played live that we then worked on and changed and made into what they now are, but most of the record was written in the studio, which is very unusual these days.”
“Heads Will Roll” sounds like it could have been recorded in another decade and brings to mind the pioneering post-punk bands of the late 1970s—many of whom also worked with Launay. He’s produced Public Image Ltd., Gang of Four, and Killing Joke, among others. Also, David Sitek joined Launay as a co-producer. Sitek is best known as a founding member of the Brooklyn, New York, art rock band TV on the Radio.
Although It’s Blitz! marks a reinvention, it’s unmistakably a Yeah Yeah Yeahs record. While other bands from the early 2000s have stopped evolving and now tour as legacy artists, Yeah Yeah Yeahs continue to make fresh-sounding records. (Check out their excellent 2022 album Cool It Down.)
Like the doomed characters in “Heads Will Roll,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs sent their own heads rolling by avoiding what was expected of them sonically. But they aren’t the first to deconstruct their band as a way to find new inspiration—see U2, Radiohead, or The Beatles.
With Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the unexpected is what you should expect. Now, off, off with your head!
Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
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