Fans give Radar Bros. some video synergy

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Sometimes the most fruitful collaborations come straight out of left field. So it was for the Radar Bros. earlier this year, when frontman Jim Putnam was contacted by a trio of filmmakers who do business as the General Assembly. Their offer: We’d like to make you a music video, for free. Putnam’s response: Have at it, although he acknowledges now, “I had no idea it would turn out that nice.”

The video for “Brother Rabbit” (off the L.A. quartet’s January release, “Auditorium”) deftly consigns the song’s gorgeous melancholy to the life of an oilfield worker — surprising in at least one way: Putnam wrote the song about his dog. “It was written from the perspective of a dog who is hanging out on the back porch, watching other dogs chasing elk,” he says.

The mood suited the General Assembly’s team of Ryan McNeill, Adam Willis and Adam Littke, two of of whom grew up in Oklahoma. “We’ve all been been fans of the Radar Bos. for a long time, and we thought maybe the somber elements in their music would fit the bleak treatments we had been working on … as a day-in-the-life sort of thing,” McNeill says. “Something in the lyrical elements of the song worked.”

Yes, it’s an actor playing the roughneck (who knew there was such an astute casting agent in Oklahoma City?), and the directors probably bent some rules getting him on an actual worksite. But the result is undeniable.

The video also provided some salve for Putnam; about the time “Auditorium,” the band’s fifth album, was released, the Radar Bros. lineup was dissolving. He’d made music with Steve Goodfriend and Senon Williams for 15 years, and now they were moving on. “At the time I was really really pissed,” Putnam says, “but like somebody said to me once, when one door closes, another one opens.” In the coming weeks, Putnam is assembling a new Radar Bros. lineup for an overseas tour. And, yes, he says he’s already at work on writing material for a new album.