Damian Kulash of OK Go at the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit (Photo: TBD staff)

Yesterday was the last day of the Future of Music Coalition's Policy Summit, the D.C.-based non-profit's annual conference focused on exploring current issues impacting musicians. One of the final speakers was Damian Kulash, a D.C. native and member of Chicago band OK Go. Kulash, who was interviewed by Neda Ulaby of NPR, talked about growing up in D.C., OK Go's famous treadmill dance, and the group's new video for "White Knuckles," which has already gone viral, in part because the band's co-stars are a bunch of well-trained, cute pooches.

On OK Go's first foray into choreographed dance moves:  "It started with a public access TV show, Chic-A-a-Go-Go. It’s fucking amazing, it’s basically Soul Train but anyone can show up, people bring kids they're babysitting, their grandmothers....we were asked to perform, but they don’t have the technology to record bands playing, so they have bands come in and mime. I think we had recorded one song at that point, we had no major label interest, and, being the contrarians we were, we didn’t want to lip sync unless we were really swinging for the fences. So we looked at N'Sync videos and cheerleading videos, and came up with this ridiculous routine. For years, we ended our show with that dance."

On OK Go's next foray into choreographed dance moves: "We decided to come up with a new dance routine [for the track "A Million Ways"], and my sister, who is a professional ballroom dancer, came up with a routine and then recorded a home video of us practicing in the back yard. We didn’t think of it as a rock video, it was just a silly, fun thing with our friends. This was before YouTube, so we weren’t thinking of how this would work promotionally. Then, someone stuck it on iFilm, and a few months later, we noticed it had been downloaded 250,000 times, and we felt like, 'Holy shit, we have saturated the entire internet!'"

On growing up in D.C.: "I grew up here in D.C., going to shows almost every day, Ian Mackaye gave me a loan at 15 to put out 7 inches. I was never a particularly talented instrumentalist, but music was a social, passionate engagement for me."

On the band's biggest foray into choreographed moves, the treadmill video for "Here It Goes Again," and how it was almost filmed at a D.C. landmark: "I called up my sister, and we spent a half hour brainstorming: we could do it on stairs, a hill, we discussed using those big round stairs by the Potomac [River],  a merry-go-round, or treadmills.  Obviously, treadmills won. We didn’t tell our management or our label, but they knew we were making a video."

On the reaction of the band's former label, Capitol Records, when OK Go first presented the treadmill video idea: "Someone in Capitol's digital marketing department watched it, and his exact words were, 'If this gets out, you’re sunk.'"

On that same Capitol's exec's comments about the "Here It Goes Again" video, after it went viral (as recorded in a USA Today article about the band):  "His big pull quote in that article was something like, 'OK Go representes the most successful internet campaign Capitol has ever waged.'"

On the doggie video for "White Knuckles"—coming soon in 3-D!: "The dog video—has everyone seen the dog video we just released?—we shot it in 3-D, but it hasn't been released yet. YouTube actually has an incredible 3-D player—some guy at YouTube in his off-time coded a 3-D player, like 'Oh guys, I made this.'"