Minneapolis duo Koo Koo are a lesson in the unexpected.
The pair went from gracing stages as an indie rock band playing the Vans Warped tour and embarking on US support tours with The Aquabats, Reel Big Fish, Frank Turner and The Smith Street Band, to now mastering their craft as a family-friendly 'Beastie Boys meets Sesame Street' global classroom dance-pop duo.Koo Koo's dance-a-long videos are played in schools all over the world, earning the band hundreds of millions of digital streams across YouTube and Spotify.
The duo stepped into a new realm with their TV series 'Oh Yeah Heck Yeah' – a fast-paced variety clip show featuring music videos, sketches, animation and interactive games in their irreverent, high-energy style which can be watched via the bands YouTube, which has reached over 370,000 subscribers.
Last year, Koo Koo announced they'd be touring Australia for the very first time to share their excitable pop-meets-dance-meets-hip hop show with kids and their adults this January and February. The tour will visit Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and will take place in the afternoon.
We sat down with Neil and Bryan – better known as Koo Koo – to find out more about their unique corner of music, and to get hyped about their upcoming Australian run.
Hello! Thank you so much for taking the time to chat. I want to talk about the beginnings of Koo Koo, because that story is quite unique, but even before that, what was it about music that made you decide that you wanted to participate in the art form?
Neil: I think, for me and in some ways for our whole band, we always just were so into live shows as sort of the main draw.
Even beyond writing songs or hanging with friends or making videos or any of the other parts, it was always about putting on a great show; and our band was born out of wanting to create a different live experience. Bryan and I were always just so drawn to bands and performers that went the extra mile going above and beyond with crowd participation or just being personable and feeling like 'Oh, they really are happy to be here!' So, yeah that's a big part of it; and what's fun about our band is that we're kind of open-ended and we're not just one thing. So what a show is can kind of change over time too.
Was there a band that inspired you to look at live shows in a certain way?
Bryan: I went and saw the band The Flaming Lips in high school with my sister at the Minnesota State Fair, and a couple of things happened. One, they put on an incredible live show: Wayne Cohen gets in his bubble and he walks over the crowd. . . and this is 20 years ago. . . I was like, 'Yep, I want to do that'.
I've never really wanted to be in a 'stand around and be cool' rock band or anything like that. Then beyond the live show, the band had stagehands, but Wayne set up his own gear onstage and was waving to people – that set the bar for me then, every time after that when I saw bands kind of hidden from the audience, or not acknowledge them I was like, 'no, I've seen it done the way I like it'.
Neil: Breaking down that barrier between the audience and the band has always been like a big punk thing. So growing up with those kinds of shows we wanted to bring that ethos into our live show too. Even though, yeah we are playing onstage and the audience is standing on the floor. We break down the barriers by having that participation and by all dancing at the same time, or again, doing a lot of the setting up ourselves, so we try to continue on with that with Koo Koo.
In the early days, you guys described yourselves as 'non threatening folky pop'. What inspired that transition to become the more colourful family-friendly duo that you're known as today? Was there a defining moment that sparked that shift for you?
Bryan: Yeah, probably when we played with our old band on a local radio station's battle of the bands, and this other band wiped the floor with us.
They were a bunch of kids that were way younger and they seemingly had no rules, and in my mind I was like, 'music has rules. This is what you do. I've read Rolling Stone my whole life.' You know?
This band had drum machines, matching outfits, used AutoTune, guitar solos. . . Funnily enough the lead singer now is a music producer of ours and helps us make music together, but that broke me. That broke it – and then Neil and I were like, 'okay, now we need to experiment'.
So we are a family band but Neil and I, we write novelty songs, you know what I mean? Like somebody who writes Christmas songs, we write very unique songs that have energy and have a style to them. So that was the break, seeing that there's no rules, everything is at your fingertips, what are you gonna do?
You've had your YouTube channel for about 15 years, pretty much since the birth of the platform. With the ability to do music videos, skits, podcasts, mailbag episodes, engaging families and kids all over the world, how has building that online presence influenced the growth of Koo Koo as a whole?
Neil: It's really been the biggest source of growth for us with the dance-along videos.
That's how most folks know who we are and that's really amazing; and that's really helped with this being our job and for enough people to know about us to come to our shows and buy merch and do all the things that move the business forward, it's super cool.
We grew up watching music videos, MTV and stuff like that, and then the transition to YouTube with bands like The Lonely Island and viral videos that were online. So with Koo Koo, it opened that up for us and it gave us a lot more possibilities as far as what music videos could be, and then you have the growth of the dance-alongs which were massive and as time goes on, video online just continues to grow.
Was it the dance-along videos that were the particular type of content that you found the most success with, or was it the music videos?
Neil: It was the dance-along videos. Those were the ones that primary school teachers started using in their classrooms; they call it a brain break, and those videos were just shared all over the place, and that was the biggest, as far as people learning about our bands.
I wouldn't want to go back and do it a different way because it got us to this level that we can do this for a living, but at the same time, just like when we were talking double-edged swords, the thing is try and not be defined by that. Like, how do we continue on and continue to do what we want to do, but not have everything be dance-along videos?
So we always keep an eye on YouTube and growing that and making sure it's there, but trying to find ways to get people who already know about us, maybe from the dance-along videos, and say, 'Hey, check out this TV show. We made it with sketches and stuff that's not dance-along videos. Hopefully you like this as well.'
So being the family-friendly act in a unique space in the music industry, how do you keep it entertaining for both kids and parents?
Neil: We are always trying to keep making new stuff and making sure that we're always coming out with new jams, even if they don't all make it into the TV show, or the live show or whatever.
Beyond making new songs, the TV show is a great example of trying to find new mediums to be a part of because being independent, we often don't have a lot of the promotional opportunities or big tours to go on. So it works in two ways because it helps find new audiences, but it also helps us scratch different itches and get into different areas that we're passionate about.
Also the flexibility of being in a two-person group like this affords us making a podcast or making a TV show, or like now we're getting into making magazines, and we've made comic books before. We partnered with people to make comic books and things like that.
We also really want to get into immersive theatre and try to do walkthrough-type experiences. So I feel like that's how we keep it fresh for ourselves and then also hopefully for the audience as well. So even though the hits are hits, you're always going to hear those when you come to the show, but hopefully if you want to seek out and see more, we have a wide range of things on the menu for you.
Bryan: Now that we've been in this band for 16 years, I feel like most bands would be like, 'I'm bored. I'm out. Keep it moving.' But I've learned my lesson from Neil with being creative outside the band.
Treating your creativity, kind of like a relationship, where you can't just pop in once in a while and be like, 'I'm gonna make five songs!' You have to have stuff going on all the time, like doodling, drawing, painting, Neil's doing more puppetry stuff and just scratching that itch, not just when it has to do with the money, but continually maintaining that creative relationship.
With the success of the TV show, 'Oh Yeah Heck Yeah', and the soundtrack that you've released with it, can fans expect more seasons, or are there plans to do more one-off projects?
Bryan: Both, and all of the above.
Neil: We loved making 'Oh Yeah Heck Yeah', it's just such a fun, different type of creative exercise for us and the only difference is we would love to partner with a streamer to be able to reach more folks, because it's really fun to make and we want more people to see it and a decent amount of people do see it on our YouTube page, but we'd love for way more people to see it and for it to reach wider.
We're big fans of 'Saturday Night Live', so it kind of helps us get into that mindset of what's a quick little sketch, what's funny about this? We like to think our songs are pretty funny, but making it a comedy sketch is a whole other thing with dialogue and the way things look and the way it cuts together. It's a whole different experience for us and we're really lucky that we get to make it. So yeah, we're definitely making another one and there'll be new songs too. 'Oh Yeah, Heck Yeah' season two is coming soon.
Bryan: We think about projects all the time, so I have a giant notes app on my phone, and the title is, Things We Can Do After Oh Yeah Heck Yeah 2 Is Done. So we got a big list. Exciting stuff!
We can't wait to have you here in Australia for your debut – any last words for your Aussie audience?
Neil: We're going to be coming to Australia for the very first time and we really are excited! Neither of us have ever been personally, or for the band before and we've had a lot of people listen to our music in Australia – so we can't wait for the shows! Hopefully we'll see you there!
Koo Koo 2025 Tour Dates
Fri 31 Jan - Factory Floor (Sydney)Sat 1 Feb - Stay Gold (Melbourne)
Sun 2 Feb - The Outpost (Brisbane)
