“Pizza thief; get him!” is something I have always dreamed of shouting in a public forum.

That is the main narrative hook of Brooklyn-based rock outfits Shark?’s video for their curiously titled track “Hate Crime Girl”. As soon as an IRL, eyepatch-donning pizza thief absconds with what is assumed to be an extra largepepperoni pie, the video turns into rad action figure theater. The lo-fi indie rock gem soundtracks the high-stakes crust-crusade. The whole thing is utterly bizarre, and the video is just half the reason why.

Prepare for a bummer: apparently, Shark?’s guitarist Jared Hiller witnessed an awful crime with a young woman while on a date, hence the title of the song. The jarring  dichotomy between unspeakable, gruesome violence and a young budding romance interested the group existentially and reminded them of controversial artist Chris Burden. Thus the song was born, and the action figure-led pizza hunt began. Summing up the band’s MO very succinctly in a recent interview they said: “We like singing about important topics and situations from an ironic or tongue-in-cheek standpoint or POV”. Both heavy and irreverent, Shark?’s music is oddly infectious and I can’t stop bumping it and thinking about how absurd it is to be alive.

If you are digging the band’s no-frills, fuzz rock and are a resident of New York City, be sure to catch the dudes tonight (September 16) for the On The Rise showcase at Le Poisson Rouge! Their latest release is the Becky and Debbie EP, which you can check out here.