Wintergreen

In its debut year, when MTV reached almost no households, the network sometimes aired late-night spots for crude, self-made clips by unsigned acts, though only comic rockers Blotto ever secured a contract from the exposure. Traditionally, however, the music-video world has blocked entry to acts lacking major-label backing. OK Go, for instance, achieved visibility through inventive self-produced clips for “A Million Ways” and “Here It Goes Again,” yet the band was already signed to EMI. Recent shifts in technology have altered that barrier. The rise of YouTube, affordable home video-editing programs, and steadily cheaper digital cameras now allows unsigned groups to reach wide audiences with a single striking video, as Wintergreen demonstrates.

The Los Angeles power-pop quartet—vocalist and rhythm guitarist Drew Mottinger, lead guitarist Trevor Sherwood, bassist Jared Anderson, and drummer Todd Ramsey—issued its five-song debut, Extended Play, on the small independent Mt. Fuji Records with minimal attention in late 2005. Several months afterward, an inventive clip for the track “When I Wake Up” surfaced on the band’s MySpace page and YouTube. Drawing on the partly factual legend that countless unsold copies of Atari’s failed E.T. cartridge had been dumped in a landfill near Alamogordo, New Mexico, the video accumulated several hundred thousand views and transformed Wintergreen into a genuine buzz act. The group then finished its first full-length album with producer Niko Bolas.