Kevin Bronson on December 13th, 2017

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Thumpasaurus are jazz guys, but they are also funny guys. They are funny guys, but they are also showmen. To use the vernacular of the day, the Los Angeles quintet is where insane meets insanely talented. The (latest) pride of USC’s Thornton School of Music, they are drummer/producer Henry Was (son of esteemed producer Don Was), keyboardist Paul Cornish, bassist Logan Kane and saxophonist Henry Solomon, along with singer-guitarist Lucas Tamaren. Their shows are mental because their music is physical, an EDM-pitched but organic take on funk-punk that has made Thumpasaurus cult heroes on the live scene, along with the likes of fellow sophisticates Knower and Vulfpeck.

They have released but one EP, “In the Beginning There Was Thump,” until today. “Mental Karate,” their new single, packs a Devo wallop and leaves you all Weird Al in the stomach — especially as played out in director Jocelyn Cooper’s video for the song. “Mental karate. A meditation,” the band says. “We chop into the bad thoughts. We investigate them, often discovering a rabbit hole that reveals a big box of thoughts behind thoughts. Sometimes all the way down to the Big Bang. This makes us say ‘Hey, we don’t have to listen to these bad thoughts.’ This works 11% of the time.”

Oh, and there’s a website to hip you to the discipline. Wink.

||| Watch: The video for “Mental Karate”

||| Also: Stream the track here, along with “I’m Too Funky”

||| Live: Thumpasaurus perform Jan. 5 at the Echo as part of FOMO Week, along with Drinking Flowers, Rumblepak, Litronix and Collin Cairo. The show is free.