Yellerkin is the duo of Adrian Galvin and Luca Buccellati, Brooklyn pop experimentalists who seem to have ingested Animal Collective and Passion Pit in equal measure. “Tools,” their new single, brings a wanton, whimsical spirit to bold, bright synthpop, veering through a handful of twists and turns en route to its big finish. “You don’t have the tools to realize God won’t talk to you,” they sing. The band offered lots of thoughts on the tune:

“Tools” is a kind of anthemic generational song, but one that toes the line between triumph and tragedy. This song is about our limitations; how fucked up it is that we are the generation that bought into all the crap our parents protested against in the 70’s! hah but whatever. We have been witnessing the complete corporate absorption of counter culture over the past 40 or so years. We we’re told when we were young that we could be anything we wanted, but in reality, we got shit loads of student loans, a lot of ideals, and a corporate marketplace which demands you devote yourself to the movement of money. “Tools” is about the shit position that leaves us in, and how I think we will/should deal with it. First we have all these ideas about how to change the system, change the bureaucratic foundations of society, throw out the old fart white men, and when we realize that that’s not an option we get angry. First we had idealism, then anger, so then we have one of two options, to either resign to the structure and sign the deals, make the money, feed the monster; OR you fake it till you make it. You pretend long enough that eventually it becomes true. Maybe I can’t talk to God, change the world, upend institutional inequality, but maybe if I keep trying every day to search inside my self for what I think might be true, maybe one day I’ll get something back, some days I’ll see truth and recognize it, and that’s a triumph. But it’s hard, we weren’t given the tools to break ground really, we have to use anything we can until we don’t need them anymore.

Hear “Tools” below.