Tacocat’s Video for “The Joke of Life” Will Make You Want to Be Their Best Friend

Everyday occurrences in 2019 are utterly ridiculous, yet have become so quotidian to us that they are difficult to fully process. Saturday Night Live weekly proves how unfunny it is when you just point and laugh at the outlandishness of a president and an administration that thrive on the outlandish.

Seattle punk outfit Tacocat, though, have a keen understanding of this strange new reality we live in, one in which irony is six feet under. They’ve embedded the upside-down nature of 2019 into their new single, “The Joke of Life,” the last to be released before their album This Mess Is a Place comes out on May 3.

Frontwoman Emily Nokes explained in a statement:

I love how this song turned out. This is also one of my favorite concepts on the album—the joke is that the joke is already a joke. You know when something is so unbelievable, in a bad way, that it can’t even be satirized because irony falls short of the real thing? Like we’ve entered a twilight zone of perpetual horror and now we’re just … adapting to it. Because what else are you going to do?

And what do Nokes and fellow Tacocat members Bree McKenna (bass), Eric Randall (guitar) and Lelah Maupin (drums) do to adapt? In the video for their sunny song, they seem to say “f*ck it” and have a good time while they’re all still here together. Nokes, McKenna, Randall and Maupin appear in a mishmash of short clips showing the band playing or goofing off, joined at times by fellow Seattle artists Robin Edwards (aka Lisa Prank) and Shannon Perry of Gazebos. They wear colorful wigs, show off “hakuna matata” foot tattoos, take body shots and generally revel in life. If you didn’t want to be their best friend already, this video will change that.

Watch the video for “The Joke of Life” below and see when Tacocat is coming to a venue near you here. You can preorder This Mess Is a Place, out May 3 via Sub Pop, here.