An estimated 98% of us experience earworms. Despite the annoying times that we can’t get a chorus or a hook of an overplayed pop song out of our heads, getting a really good earworm stuck can be one of the best things ever.
We here at Nerdist are dead-set on bringing you those types of songs, if only for the weekend. We’ll be scouring the internet for the best earworms we can shove into your meaty brains!
I honestly cannot tell you where I got this week’s earworms. It’s not ’80s or ’90s stuff that I’ve been holding onto, nor is it suggested by an editor, nor even plucked from something that happened this week. If anything, this week’s songs – and the band who performs them – are a bit of an anomaly in my musical repertoire as I really cannot tell you how I stumbled upon this band. If anything, there is a small inkling of a memory that a cousin of mine who is substantially cooler than I (although I’m really not setting a high bar) at some point told me to seek out Atlanta’s Hello Ocho. So, this article is earworms at its purist as they’ve somehow found there way back to my earholes for no apparent reason and boy am I happy they did.
Stickin’ to the Sheets
Atlanta-based band Hello Ocho may not have a huge catalog of music but the 13 tracks on their self-titled album certainly have staying power of an indie rock band that could exist anywhere within the last decade or so. Each song on the album has a strong build into driving beats, catchy hooks and lyrics that seem half poetry slam, half ad-lib-stream-of-consciousness. Even after that, I don’t think I’ve come close to capturing what the band really is. It is perhaps fitting considering they themselves have a rather enlightened way of describing what they do: “Hello Ocho is like a waterbed in zero gravity. Hello Ocho is like a full body velcro suit against a room of carpet. Hello Ocho is like crying and eating at the same time. If this doesn’t make sense, that’s fine. But, neither does reading about a band to hear what they sound like.”
Good point fellas, lets move on…
Chili Cheese Connie
Apologies for that video. I probably should have warned you because it is fairly hard to stomach. Here’s an album art version in case you wanted to listen again and not swear off food for a day or two. Gross chewing videos aside, their sound – to me at least – is that of a well-practiced garage band that gives off the vibe that they focus first on having fun in what they do, knowing great music will follow. Almost every song on their album has that sense of being fun to play.
Whomp
In my humble not-really-a-music-writer opinion, this track in particular deserves as much radio play as anything out there today.
It’s odd that I really cannot recall how I have this band in my music collection. I’m the type of person that inexplicably knows every word to Del Amitri’s “Roll to Me” in an un-ironic way, so to not be able to recall how a great band like Hello Ocho got into my head just has me worried I’m losing my mind. I suppose the bright side to all this is that – and I apologize to the editor ahead of time – an earworms article will soon be chock full of Del Amitri and other such ’90s pop songs.
Fan of Hello Ocho? New to them? What do you think? Can someone please explain how I got them? Let me know in the comments below!
—
Featured Image: HelloOcho
Blake Rodgers writes for Nerdist from Chicago IL where he lives happily with his Guinness World Record for High Fives. You can be his pal by following him on Twitter (@TheBlakeRodgers)
