
The Priestner brothers, and Lubo.
Rare Americans is a Punk Rock band from Canada. The lineup currently consists of the Canadian Priestner brothers and the Slovakian Lubo. They're particularly notable for how their songs are promoted. They chose to promote their songs as ads on YouTube as full music videos. Their website can be found here,
and their YouTube account can be found here.![]()
Discography
- Rare Americans (2018)
- Rare Americans 2 (2021)
- Rare Americans 3: Jamesy Boy & The Screw Loose Zoo (2021)
- You're Not a Bad Person, It's Just a Bad World (2022)
- Searching for Strawberries: The Story of Jongo Bongo (2023)
Tropes
- Abusive Parents:
- Nicky’s father was an alcoholic who beat his mother violently while also beating him when he tried to intervene.
- The Blonde Girl’s father in Run The World is an alcoholic who verbally abuses his daughter while drunk. The song Sway shows him in a sympathetic light, implying he’ll quit his addiction.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: In Searching for Strawberries, Jongo, his family, and the Corrupt Corporate Executive have yellow skin (making them look rather like The Simpsons characters), his main rival at work has purple skin in "Money!" (blue in "Milk and Honey", if it's the same guy), while most other characters have more normal human skin tones.
- Animated Music Video: A lot of their music has an animated music video to go with it. Searching for Strawberries is an entire rock opera where every song has one, making it an animated musical.
- Anthropomorphic Vice: Anthropomorphic alcoholic drinks and cigarettes show up quite a few times in the video for "Money!". Jongo dances with a living whisky bottle at the yacht party (representing the dream of luxury used to motivate the employees) early in the video, and is cheered on by cigarettes and bottles the second time he tries to run up the hill. He's also seen walking home for the night with an anthropomorphic fleshlight at one point.
- As Himself: Searching for Strawberries: The Story of Jongo Bongo features voices of the actual singers who play themselves, including Jongo Bongo.
- Author Tract: Billionaires and the idea of capitalism itself is torn apart by various songs made by them, with one of the main antagonist of the series being Uncle Graham, who is a very obvious depiction of Jeff Bezos.
- Broken Bird: Nicky from "Brittle Bones Nicky", wearing a bitter expression and having suffered abuse from his father. He fights back and throughout the video, continues to fight until he dies of old age.
- Byronic Hero: Crosses into this because Nicky does show a soft side to his girlfriend and his prison buddy. Later on in Gas Mask, Nicky can be seen helping the boxer through his drug addiction, having gone through similar struggles himself.
- Central Theme: Freedom of expression and doing your passions instead of conforming to society’s expectation is a major sticking point on their songs, with corporate work being portrayed as soul crushing and exploitative.
- Claiming Via Flag: Elon Musk does this to Mars in the video for "Money!", after he and the other billionaires leave Earth. The flag simply says "MINE".
- Cool Shades: Alfred, the Series Mascot for Rare Americans, sports a cool pair of shades and has a generally cool personality.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive:
- Uncle Graham from "Hullabaloo." He overworks, guilts, and drugs his employees into being subservient to him, and then morphs into some sort of eldritch creature and eats his own employees. It's gotten to the point where his own security is afraid of him.
- The blond CEO in the first act of Searching for Strawberries berates and overworks his employees while he lies in the lap of luxury, and shows blatant favoritism. It turns out he also gives his favorites wolf masks that turn them into actual wolves in order to make them into more aggressive competitors.
- The Dead Can Dance: Brittle Bones Nicky, after death, pulls off some funky moves during the instrumental interludes.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The music video for Moss Park.
- Dem Bones: Brittle Bones Nicky.
- Dirty Coward: Uncle Graham and His associates prove themselves as this in "Mr. Please"; Immediately fleeing in a plane once their doors are busted down and are on the run.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Nicky when he is human.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Subverted in that Brittle Bones Nicky isn't a bad person, but he's aggressive, crafty, and tricky. That said, even though she died when he was very young, he still loved his mom very much and a large reason why he sold his soul to Satan is to protect his mother.
- Fictional Counterpart: The doll Lola in "The Moneyz", being a blonde fashion doll that goes through a bewildering range of fashions, occupations and ideological messages, is clearly intended as a stand-in for Barbie.
- God and Satan Are Both Jerks: Of a sort, in "Brittle Bones Nicky 2". At first, God is merely presented as the kind of guy who laughs at people who assume they go to Heaven before tossing them over to The Devil. Later, however it's revealed that The Devil is God; he just wears either title based on his mood."Surprised? Most of 'em are.
I'm Mufasa and I'm Scar.
Lily white shit gets old and trite
Now tell me why you’re in my sight." - Hate Sink: Several characters who appear are made to be specifically hated:
- Uncle Graham, The Mayor of Crooked City, and The Raven settle themselves as this in “Mr. Please” being abusive, smug elitists who immediately cower once they are cornered.
- The Boyfriend of the Blonde Hair Girl in “Rule The World”; He bullies the protagonist and writes Loser on his arm with a marker and nearly hits him with his car as he was drinking and driving, and verbally abuses his girlfriend when she accidentally breaks a beer bottle at his windshield when the car made a halt. This lead her storming away and breaking up with him, and him nearly getting run over by a car driven by Alfred.
- “Today” features multiple deplorable bigots in this song about accepting who you are and rejecting comforts, including a gay conversion church, abusive misogynist government bodies in a middle eastern country, and a group of protestors outside of an abortion clinic who proceed to attack a Christian woman for going to the clinic.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Ryan and Dave. Despite the very different lives they lead, Dave isn't willing to give up on Ryan, and helps him go through rehab.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: The Panda and the Eagle in "Knives, Guns, and Bed" fight with each other while aggressively making out.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Some of their videos have humans and anthropomorphic animals co-existing without raising any eyebrows. It seems to vary from 'verse to 'verse: for example, the Nicky saga doesn't feature any Funny Animal characters, nor does the somewhat more realistic (and autobiographical) Searching for Strawberries (aside from the salespersons being turned into wolves by their masks, and Alfred appearing at the end). Sometimes, animal characters fulfil specific roles in the setting (for example, Lemming Corp uses "doberman-dalmatians" as armed guards, while all the workers appear to be human).
- Literal Metaphor:
- In "Money!", the "rat race" is literalised as a dangerous rollercoaster/obstacle course.
- In "Hullabaloo", Uncle Graham feeds off the working class by literally eating them.
- Mayor Pain: The Mayor of “Crooked City” shows little care for his citizens being abused and driven to poverty, and quickly flees with Uncle Graham and his Raven associate when they all fight back.
- Meaningful Rename: In “Demons” we find out the Red Skinned girl was named “Evelyn” and was a social outcast battling self esteem issues and depression, before she eventually overcomes it and changes her appearance and changes her name to “Red.”
- Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: The Panda brought a knife to fight against the Eagle's gun, in the song titled "Knives, Guns, and Bed."
- No Name Given: Several of the major characters that appear throughout the music videos don’t get many names, such as the protagonists of “Run The World”; Subverted by the very popular red skin girl in the same music video, who is revealed to be Evelyn before changing her name to red.
- Non-Standard Character Design: In the video for "Hullabaloo", Uncle Graham is inhumanly tall, towering high over his more realistically-sized workers and guards. Justified, since he turns out not to be human.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Dave is a calm headed and much more relaxed individual compared to his more loudmouthed cousin Ryan. However, when seeing just how badly Ryan became in “Mr Please” due to the Mayor’s laws, Dave is just pissed and rage fully stares at the Mayor.
- Powder Keg Crowd: “Hullabaloo” has a large riot forming outside of Lemming Headquarters, ready to breach at any moment, and “Mr. Please” has the other shoe drop as the rioters break in and take over.
- Protest Song: Several songs are made to protest against various political topics, such as “Garbage Day” on the rampant gun problem, as well as “Hullabaloo”; “MONEY!”; “Milk and Honey” and “Mr. Please”
- Rule of Symbolism: A lot of Rare American Music Videos run on symbolism while also telling a story:
- The video for "Knives, Guns, and Bed" shows a panda and a bald eagle (the latter wearing a red, white and blue outfit) having a self-indulgent duel/make-out session surrounded by dissatisfied humans (with visual cues from the pro-Hong Kong and Black Lives Matter protests, respectively).
- Self-Titled Album: Their first three albums follow this pattern, albeit 3 has a subtitle to it.
- Stable Time Loop: Brittle Bones Nicky pushes himself down into Hell so he can become the skeletal trickster from his first video.
- Take That!:
- In the video for "Money!" (the first song in Searching for Strawberries), caricatures of Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos appear, representing the ideal of super-wealth that drives the common person to enter the rat race. Musk is also seen landing on Mars and planting a flag saying "MINE" on it (after protagonist Jongo Bongo is fried by the flame from the billionaires' rockets).
- “Hullabaloo” itself is a take down piece of billionaires such as Jeff Bezos, with Uncle Graham being a manipulative sociopath who strong arms his workers to overwork and abuse them, all the while downplaying the controversies and protests against his companies.
- Tom the Dark Lord: The Corrupt Corporate Executive in "Hullabaloo" runs his prison-like company with an iron fist and is actually an Eldritch Abomination who eats his employees. His name is Uncle Graham.
- The Trickster: "Brittle Bones Nicky was crafty and tricky, and that son of a bitch was gold."
- The 'Verse: Somewhat, as characters from certain music videos will show up in others.
- Visual Pun:
- The salespersons get turned into wolves that attack and eat each other in the "Milk and Honey" video. In other words, corporate offices are a dog-eat-dog world.
- In the same video, the CEO wears a golden suit and his wife/girlfriend wears a white dress, making their appearance correspond to the "milk and honey" of the title.
