“Danny Don’t You Know,” the new video from 1980s schlock-rocking comedy band Ninja Sex Party, practically begs for viral fame: It stars Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard as the younger version of even-pornier-named frontman Danny Sexbang, himself the musical alter ego of Game Grumps cohost Dan Avidan. It features a cameo from another popular YouTube gaming personality, Pamela Horton (who is not Ellie Kemper, although you’d be forgiven for making the same mistake). And both the video and song’s premise—rock star Danny travels back in time to reassure his nerdy younger self that everything’s going to be fine, just as soon as he outgrows “the awkward phrase from 12 to 29”—seems specifically tailored for a whole lot of “I feel this” retweets.
Is it gimmicky? Certainly—as much as Ninja Sex Party’s knowingly jokey music, whose glammed-up-but-smoothed-out bombast comes off like The Darkness if it were aping Starship instead of Queen. But it’s a self-aware sort of gimmickry, one that takes digs at the band members’ own distant and current lack of cool (“No one cares that you’re 35!” Sexbang sings at one point), and maybe that shamelessness is enough to ameliorate its naked desperation. Regardless, it would take a stronger-willed website than ours to resist putting together that headline up there, or the shameless SEO-baiting at play all around, so here’s an exclusive premiere of the song from the band’s upcoming Cool Patrol, due August 17.