'Win' with Thunderbirds Are Now!

Detroit’s thrashy indie-rock quartet Thunderbirds Are Now! are prepping their third album, Make History, and they’re hoping to do just that with the track we scored from it, “We Win (Ha Ha).” Speaking with SPIN.com, guitarist/vocalist Ryan Allen revealed that though the song is rife with punchy keys, a driving rhythm section, and pop hooks, it has a macabre side that revolves around a ubiquitous dead body and a failed friendship.

The other part of the song, though, is about his band’s opinion on today’s music as “stale, image-based…and like 18th-wave emo.” The chorus of the song earnestly reflects on this view with the lines, “We’ve heard this one before / Nothing new and nothing more.” And while Allen admits the song’s title has little to do with its lyrical content, the moniker comes as “a pat on our own backs from us to say in a slightly cocky way we’re hoping to win the battle between bullshit music and not.” When asked if his band achieves this objective, Allen joked, “Probably not — we just write a bunch of disco-punk.”

Now Hear This:
Thunderbirds Are Now! – “We Win (Ha Ha)” (Download MP3)

Talk: Do Thunderbirds Are Now! make history with “We Win (Ha Ha)”? COMMENT