Kevin Bronson on May 20th, 2020

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Keith Slettedahl spent more than 14 years as a driving force in The 88, arguably the finest power-pop band to come out of Los Angeles in this millennium. The quartet released seven albums, populated dozens of films, commercials, video games and TV shows with their songs and did a stint as Ray Davies’ opening and backup band. They are perhaps best known for “At Least It Was Here,” the theme song to the sitcom “Community.” (Coincidentally, Slettedahl performed that tune just this week when the cast of “Community” reunited for an online table read to support charity.)

Succumbing to burnout, The 88 faded away around the time they released their 2016 album “Close to You.” Slettedahl left his native L.A. to move with his wife and daughter to Atlanta so his wife could be closer to her mother, and it was not a smooth transition. “I felt a sense of disconnection,” he says. “I missed family and friends, and I’d been in that band for so long, I didn’t really know what to do. And creatively, I realized I’d been on auto-pilot for some time.”

Then, sparks flew. Working by himself, Slettedahl wrote an album’s worth of tunes in two months, eventually returning to L.A. for 11 days to record them with producer (and Posies drummer) Frankie Siragusa. The album, titled “You Know, You Know,” is full of bright rockers that touch on the existential issues one confronts after a drastic life change — and in the songs’ crisp hooks and surprising changes, Slettedahl’s still-boyish voice sounds as if he’s singing for his supper.

More surprisingly, the songwriter and videographer Chris Cole today premiere the cinematic triptych “Three Songs,” a rather left-field but nonetheless compelling introduction to Slettedahl’s new music. Featuring the songs “No One Understands Me Like You Do,” “I Had Your Letter in My Hand” and “My Baby,” the video — a collage of 1960s and ’70s images from German filmmaker Lutz Mommartz — takes an abstract approach to following a familiar story arc.

With tongue firmly in cheek, Cole explains how his collaboration with Slettedahl happened:

“The story behind the ‘Three Songs’ collaboration is an oft-told tale: Two kids play Little League together in the San Fernando Valley, meet up again 35 years later and 3,000 miles apart to have a three-hour existential phone call, leading to an exploration of how video can be used as a musical instrument and a way to jam with the band. … then, using the public archive of a German Expressionist filmmaker and his 30 hours of online footage to prove this notion, lovingly carving out 5- to 10-second clips here and there to render an 11-minute visual collage that forms a narrative of birth, life and death, all set against the backdrop of some of the most vital music of the last few years. Neither of us were that good at baseball, so this was the logical progression.”

As far as his album’s progression is concerned, Slettedahl admits he’s not sure. There may or may not be “single” on the way … or perhaps all three are in the 11-minute film.

||| Watch: “Three Songs”