Stealing Sheep revive MS Paint aesthetics for their “Joking Me” video

Stealing Sheep are taking things back to the early days of the internet. A pre-social media era where things were glitchy, graphics were poor, and life was simpler. The video for their irresistible new single "Joking Me" is a sugary dose of nostalgia for Internet Explorer and MS Paint, complete with kawaii net art characters.

The fun vibes of the video match the song, a bouncy and synth-filled call to arms urging a mystery person to drop everything and run away into the dreamscape lying behind their computer screen. "Let's meet up and go dancin', the band urges. "Meet me on the dancefoor at midnight."

"Joking Me" is the first song to be taken from the band's forthcoming album Big Wows, due on April 19 on Heavenly Recordings. The album is the follow-up to the British trio's 2015 record Not Real.

Speaking to The FADER via email, Stealing Sheep said: "Both the song and the video speak a lot about todays modern culture and how things seem throw away: love, communication, revealing the disappointments and let downs but also the ephemeral of the delete, trash, emoji digital world. The way you can put up a front on social media, cultivate an imagined life, your best life.

"We teamed up with 8bit video artist Pastel Castle (Emily Garner) from Leeds, who created Stealing Sheep avatars, we became pixelated superheroes in an over saturated and glitchy platform. It sets the scene for a full series of karaoke videos to be released alongside the album exploring Stealing Sheep in a digital dimension, shifting identities amidst changing cultural moods and millennial paraphernalia. The "Do you think about me" HTML malfunction noting the obsessive nature of social media. It's a crazy time and it's challenging navigating through it."

Check out the video above.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Simon Webb.