Hamilton band creates viral video sensation

A collaboration between Hamilton's Young Rival and Michigan artist James Kuhn is quickly turning into YouTube's next big thing.

The band discovered Kuhn's blog via reddit in the fall of 2011.

“We saw his work, and right away we knew we had to get this guy to do a video for us,” said frontman Aron D'Alesio.

Bassist John Smith reached out to Kuhn, and asked if he was interested. He was, and so began the long process of piecing together the video.

Kuhn would lip sync performances to tape, and then mail DVDs back to the band from Michigan.

“He's definitely an old-school guy,” D'Alesio said. “John just kept getting all these packages in the mail.”

Smith then edited the video — which promptly blew up on YouTube and Reddit. In just ten days, it had amassed over 600,000 hits.

“We wanted a video people would be interested in watching more than once and sharing,” D'Alesio said.

Goal achieved. To put things in context, the song received almost 200,000 hits in just 24 hours from Oct. 28 to Oct. 29.

The track is from their newest record, Stay Young. It's undeniably catchy — something that helped it along on its viral video journey.

It also makes the whole enterprise a bit creepy for some.

“It just weirds some people out,” D'Alesio said with a laugh.

“But that's kind of the point. We just wanted to make this thing unstoppable.”

For more on Young Rival, visit their website.

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