VIDEO OF THE DAY: “DIFFERENT DAYS” BY THE MEN

Brooklyn by way of San Francisco quartet the Men have a special relationship with their fans. First, they turn to them to make a video for the second single from their latest album, Tomorrow’s Hits (Sacred Bones, March 2014), then they post on their blog that they are in need of a van to use for their spring tour, which takes them from Cleveland on April 10 to DC on June 7. “Do you have a dependable van for rent or for sale?” they ask, promising, “The Men will return your van in great shape.” Guitarists Marius Atherton and Alex Rather-Taylor, bassist Paul Hanna, and drummer Danny Kendrick certainly do a lot of hard driving on their fourth full-length, a collection of eight songs recorded live in a Brooklyn studio that would sound great blasting out of a van speeding down the highway. (You can currently stream the album, the follow-up to such earlier albums as We Are the Men and Le Bonheur, here.) On Tomorrow’s Hits, the band mixes surf pop, garage rock, psychedelia, and even a little country, evoking Neil Young and Crazy Horse (“Dark Waltz”), Jerry Garcia (“Sleepless”), a frantic Bob Dylan (“Pearly Gates”), and even the Traveling Wilburys with the Velvet Underground (“Settle Me Down”), while ramping up some horns on the wild and crazy “Another Night.” German photographer Helge Mundt won the “Different Days” video contest; you can see his prize-winning entry above. We don’t know what happened with the van. The Men, who sparkled at last summer’s 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport, will be playing the Wick in Brooklyn on May 10 with the Obits and Nude Beach.