Pond – “Giant Tortoise”

While not barefoot and relatively sedate onstage with Tame Impala, bassist Nick Allbrook plays the part of kinetically charged, livewire frontman for his own band Pond, a project cut from similarly psilocybic, riff-loaded, flanged-out cloth. Allbrook’s ecstatic fits tend to be one step shy of you being legit worried he’s having a seizure, though obviously he’s got the stoner-mellow thing down cold, too. So “Giant Tortoise,” the first single and video from Pond’s forthcoming fifth LP Hobo Rocket, has all those elements in one — it opens with a Primal Scream churn before moving into decidedly Mercury Revved up psych terrain; blissed out verses, fiery hooks, harmonized riffs. The official video captures footage of the band spazzing out at SXSW 2012 juxtaposed with slow motion liquid splashes, explosions, martial arts, dancing, babes, sports highlights, immolation, and pretty much anything else you could imagine tripping youths YouTubing while peaking. (It actually looks like the held a camera up to a laptop streaming things on YouTube in most instances.)