PYYRAMIDS’ ‘Don’t Go’ video: Dragons, monkeys, oh my!

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Music videos built around highly coordinated stunts involving cars, dogs or a Rube Goldberg contraption are certainly fantastic. But sometimes all you need for a catchy video is multicolored curtains, paper dragons, sparkly clouds and a cute little girl to work with all the props. Oh, and it helps if there’s pizza too, a well-known motivator of humans young and old.

A video like the one here for Timothy Nordwind’s side band PYYRAMIDS must be a walk in the park for the bassist whose day job is playing with video magicians OK Go. That band’s complicated and fun videos are legend. (Nordwind typically takes a big role in OK Go’s videos; in ‘Here It Goes Again,’ for instance, its Nordwind mouthing the lyrics, not lead singer Damian Kulash. And dare we say he’s the best dancer of the group?) With PYYRAMIDS, he and singer Drea Smith have taken a decidedly more low-key approach but the results are winsome all the same. And how could they not be when a monkey hand puppet is involved?

Shot in a day on a stage built in director Ericka Clevenger’s garage, ‘Don’t Go’ is an acid trip, but one built around a kid’s world. The video’s star, the 8-year-old Emillia (Millie) Sterkel, vamps, dances, lip-synchs and well, kind of spaces out in front of several imaginary landscapes that were created by Nordwind, art director Javier Mesa and a bunch of Echo Park friends.

Millie, lucky girl, got to take home any prop she wanted. A PYYRAMIDS rep tells us the band will be working with its young star again -- but they’re still hammering out the details of her difficult pizza rider.

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--Margaret Wappler

PYYRAMIDS will play the Echo (with No, Future Ghost, Ivan and Alyosha) on Monday. The Echo is at 1822 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles. 8:30 p.m. Free.