Hot Hot Heat Recruit Edmonton's Weirdest for '21@12' Video

Hot Hot Heat aren't the same band they were when they released 2007's 'Happiness Ltd.,' and it has nothing to do with the change in their lineup. The Vancouver-based outfit is motivated these days by being creative as possible -- away from the eye of big business. That's just what they did on their new album, 'Future Breeds,' which was crafted on their own dime, in their own studio, away from any corporate influence. And it's an ethic they've carried over into the video clip for '21@12.'

"We just came from a scenario where people were spending $300K for the album, $300K for the video. This record sounds better than anything we've done and all the visuals for it look better," frontman Steve Bays tells Spinner. "It's just like a massive explosion of creative freedom."

Directed by Michael Maxxis (AlexisonFire, Three Days Grace, Cradle of Filth), the clip was shot in Edmonton about a month ago, starring the band and a true cast of characters that included an adorably cherubic 5-year-old named Ruby, a neighborhood grandmother, a pro-wrestler named Mr. Intensity and a shirtless man with a rhyme.

"[There was a] curly haired guy with his shirt off, just a guy in the street who literally came running out of his apartment," Bays says. "He's like, 'I'm Jay McKay from back in the day/where weed was weed and hay was hay,' and all of these weird one-liners. And he has missing teeth. He was really the most truly Edmonton character you could find."

Bays asked the man to appear in the clip, but he -- at first -- expressed a reticence to join the clip over his attire.

"He's like, 'Let me throw on a shirt,' and I'm like, 'You know what? You look perfect just as is,'" Bays recounts of his persuasive verbiage. Beyond the cast of characters, the actual song was inspired by a photo Bays took on their last tour.

"One of the people that was on the road with us was turning 21 and we were in this small college town," Bays says. "Every bar we went to that was still open wouldn't let him in and he was literally turning 21 at midnight. I just remembered I had a photograph of him on my phone, pleading with the bouncer and he was pointing at the clock and the bouncer's holding his ID. I took that photo and wrote turning '21@12.'"

That moment and the newly minted adult actually gave Bays a larger concept for the track.

"The song's actually just about the false sense of freedom that you have in your early 20s when you get all the benefits of being an adult, but you have none of the social responsibility and you're kind of unaware of how your actions reflect you," he explains. "It's just such a great, fleeting sense of false freedom."

'Future Breeds' is due out June 8. Check out the video for '21@12' here.