South By Southwest is over, the tacos have been digested, and the swag bags have been picked clean of cool promo sunglasses. Three-fourths of OK Go represented in Austin and stayed pretty busy through a whirlwind few days of panels, gigs, sessions, and a ride in a giant dragon bicycle. Even if you were in Austin, there’s no way you saw everything, so sit back, throw a high-wattage bulb in your desk lamp, and pretend you’re back in the Texas sun while you fire up these sweet videos.

Dragon bicycle by Austin Bike Zoo.

1. PYYRAMIDS

Tim, Drea, and PYYRAMIDS have an awesome new album coming out super-d00per soon via Paracadute called Brightest Darkest Day. They brought the band to Austin to preview their freshest jams. The cassette (and mp3s) are available for preorder now.

DJ Spooky, along with Ms. Amanda Palmer herself, showed up for the PYYRAMIDS DJ set.

2. Andy and His Rock-Hard Apps

Meanwhile, resident OK Go-bot Andy transformed between his various forms, leading a panel called Activists, Rockstars, and Start-Ups, which featured the legendary aforementioned DJ Spooky. He also announced a brand new app coming this spring from Paracadute.

3. Damian Waxes Smartypants

Damian drank juice and talked with some very smart people at GE’s Brilliant Brunch.

Last Friday, Aaron Swartz killed himself in his apartment in Brooklyn, NY. Tomorrow afternoon, his friends, family, and many people who didn’t know Aaron but were inspired by his life and saddened by his death will gather together at Cooper Union in New York City to mourn and celebrate him. The event is open to the public. Damian will perform a song in tribute.

Memorial Website
Wikipedia
Thoughts from Cory Doctorow
Thoughts from Lawrence Lessig
An interview with Lawrence Lessig about Aaron

And most importantly, if you are thinking about harming yourself in any way, please seek help. Make a phone call to a friend or to a help line in your country. In the US you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. There are suicide hotlines for dozens of countries. Please call one, if you are ever in need.

Gift-wrapping an mp3 is a difficult process, a delicate mix of Japanese origami, ancient sailors’ knots, .php coding, and Scotch tape. Right now, there’s Scotch tape all over the laptop screen and we accidentally deleted a rare mix of Dan singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” in Esperanto, so we’re just going to cut our losses and proceed with what we’ve dubbed The Twelve Days of OK Go. ‘Tis the season of ’tis-ing, after all.

That is, between now and the New Year, we’re going to be giving away a bunch of mp3s of hard-to-find OK Go tracks. You can probably find most of them elsewhere on the internet with a periscope and some Google skills, though probably not as iPod-ready as this. To get the goods, amble on over to ye olde online OK Go cyber-shoppe. We’ll update this post every day with the latest links.

1. “Last Leaf,” Damian solo, Mahogany Session, 2010.

2. “Dynamite,” A La Playa feat. Damian, Brian L. Perkins, Matt Smith, & Alex Galloway, Appendices CD-R, 1995.

3. “Oh Lately It’s So Quiet,” acoustic version, Deep Cuts EP, 2009.

4. “Here It Goes Again,” UK Surf Mix, Deep Cuts EP, 2009.

5. “Wave of Mutilation,” Pixies cover, Live A Version Six compilation, 2010.

6. “Down For the Count,” A Million WaysEP, UK only, 2006.

7. “Bye Bye Baby,” demo, Brown EP, 2000.

8. “Antmusic,” Adam & the Ants cover, Brown EP, 2000.

9. “Letterbox,” They Might Be Giants cover, Hello Radio compilation, 2006.

10. “Father Christmas,” Kinks cover, Kevin and Bean’s Super Christmas compilation, 2006.

11. “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” 2010.

12. “Any Time At All,” Beatles cover, unreleased.

It’s been a somewhat quiet year on the OK Go front, we admit. A year where the guys wound down the relentless touring, video making, and experimentation of the last few years and began focusing on the even bigger projects to come. But that doesn’t mean the band was inactive. (Well, except for Andy, he’s cryogenically frozen in our mountain storage facility in between tours and bursts of app writing.)

In fact, Damian was out in the world every single day in possession of a phone with a built-in camera. Shocking, we know. Somewhere in there–June to be specific–he started taking pictures and posting them to Instagram.

Well, in order to cash in on this, the most Judeo-Christian-Pagan of all buying seasons, we  handpicked 50 of our favorites and brought them forth into what cyber-scientists call “meatspace.” In other words, Damian’s photos are now available as a handsome, self-contained, spiral-bound book which, at 3.5″x2.4″ small and $14 cheap, is perfect for the smaller, rectangular stockings in your life.

So go ahead, embrace the season, and buy the book right here.