OK Go The SoCal Sound Session
Discussing their latest album And the Adjacent Possible
3 songs performed live – Interview with Mookie
Known for their wildly creative music videos and genre-blending pop-rock, the Grammy-winning band OK Go joined Marc “Mookie” Kaczor in studio for an interview, and allowed The SoCal Sound a chance to capture their live performance… naturally recorded on video!
Origins
OK Go’s origin story plays like something out of an indie film. Front man Damian Kulash and bassist Tim Norwind first met at the prestigious arts summer camp Interlochen in Northern Michigan.
“We were getting it wrong even then,” Kulash joked, recalling that he was there for visual art while Tim was studying theater. “But we were long-distance friends who sent mixtapes to each other until we reconnected after college in Chicago.” That reconnection eventually led to OK Go’s formation,
The DIY mentality runs deep with OK Go, Kulash started his own record label in high school after discovering a zine from Simple Machines that explained the process of pressing vinyl, funded by the sale of his baseball card collection… Mookie, a baseball card collector himself, mentioned “maybe some of those would be quite expensive today” which Damian responds, “Yeah, but a lifetime of making music is worth more than the baseball cards”, so it was a fair trade!
And the Adjacent Possible
Ant the Adjacent Possible marks the fifth studio album from OK Go, and it is a reminder of the bands innovation. Blending the bands signature inventiveness with raw, human emotion, its described from Kulash as “very earnest, very human, very organic.” This album embraces imperfection and experimentation at a time when algorithm-driven music dominates the major digital platforms.
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A Love Letter to Public Radio
Kulash’s relationship with public radio runs deep. In the late ‘90s, he was employed by NPR’s Chicago Bureau, where we build a close circle of friends, which he would later go on to work on iconic shows like This American Life and Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!.
“Ira Glass asked us to be the house band for his touring show for This American Life,” Kulash explained. “It was the biggest audience we had ever played for at that point. We went from performing for 120 people to thousands overnight.”
But the exposure wasn’t the only benefit. Public radio became engrained into the foundation of the band.“Public radio is a treasure trove of intellectual thought,” he said. “It’s one of the few places where you can actually feel uplifted by what you hear. That community of people who challenge each other to be better thinkers, better citizens, and better consumers of art—being a part of that helped guide our career.”
The channels that public radio opens for creativity, community, and experimentation helps artists like OK Go bypass traditional industry routes and forge independent paths. “It reminded us early on that we weren’t chasing pop radio success—we were chasing the art.”
Songs Performed
OK Go Sandbox and the Power of Education
Another thread in OK Go’s evolving narrative is their commitment to education. Their nonprofit project, OK Go Sandbox, provides free educational tools for teachers to use the band’s music videos as learning aids in classrooms across the country.
“When we learned that teachers were using our videos to teach physics, it felt like our work was doing better things in the world than we even intended,” Kulash said. “So we built a platform where educators can find curriculum-aligned challenges and tools. It’s been really rewarding.”
OK Go And the Adjacent Possible is available to stream everywhere now and double LP available at okgo.net/#store
The SoCal Sound Sessions, interviews, and performances are filmed and edited by Matt Blake, recorded and mixed by Tristan Dolce.
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