There are bands that have exciting live shows, and there are bands that do what Videohippos do. A Videohippos show is an immersive, cross-platform experience full of explosive bursts of noise, video and hard-hitting electro-pop attacking all of your senses. One of the founding members, Jim "grgl" Triplett, sat down with Spinner to discuss video art, the band's name and what's new for their 2010 SXSW show.

How would you describe your sound in your own words?

I guess I would just say melodic and expressive.

What are your musical influences?

Velvet Underground, the Kinks, Suicides and the Everly Brothers.

How did you guys come together?

We formed in 2004. It was me and Kevin, who plays drums. We had been in a band together in high school. We went to college, and after we finished college we formed a new band that incorporated video art into it. That's how we became Videohippos. It was an experiment of putting projected video over music that we wrote. It became more of a focus on songwriting and live performing. The video art just started to evolve with the music.

What made you want to start incorporating video art into your music?

It was something Kevin was initially interested in before he went to study video art in school. It's just the technology of sitting down and editing videos on a computer and putting down a quick track, so you're able to play along with the videos that you edit. We saw a few bands do that, and what we're doing is similar. One band was Angles Muertes from Montreal. They had a similar set-up, although the music wasn't really synced up to the video as much. It's just a new layer that makes our live show a little more fun.

How did you come up with your band name?

I wanted to use the word "video" to show that video art is a major part of our performance. We couldn't think of a word to combine it with. One that we found was a Latin word for "horse," which was "eohippus." We wanted to combine "video" with that word, but it didn't sound that good. "Videohippos" sounded a little better.

What are you doing this year at SXSW that's different than the previous times you've performed there?

This time, we've added two members to the band. We're a four-piece. Before, when we'd make our videos, we'd have a first track. We'd perform to pre-recorded tempo, but now it's completely live sounds with a keyboard and bass player added. It really has a good effect on how the music sounds live. I'm pretty excited about that. We'll also have copies of our split CD we did with Sewn Leather. It features collaborations with Baltimore bands we like DJ Dog Dick Teeth Mountain and Ed Schrader.


David Dennis Jr. is a contributor from Seed.com. Learn how you can contribute here.