Video: "Blue" - Ants Ants Ants (World Premiere!)

Yay for new bands making a splash! The band in question is Ants Ants Ants, and even before the release of their debut album Why Why Why? next month, I'm already tickled pink by one of their brand new videos. It's for the song "Blue," about blue whales, inspired in part by a conversation which one half of the duo Johnny Clay had with his daughter -- “On the way to school one morning, my 7 year old asked what the biggest animal on earth was - I told her it was a blue whale and we looked it up together when we got to school. We found out they can be 80 feet long!”

For the gentle, hummable song about blue whales, the Portland, Oregon duo of Johnny Clay and Dave Gulick turned to animator Chris Purdin. The animation from Purdin (who also did the album art) is a perfect fit for the music, friendly and warm. I'm happy to world-premiere the video. And while Why Why Why? isn't available until May 20th, if you pre-order it at all the places you preorder music these days, you can get "Blue" as an instant download. So go forth and, er, dive in! [Slinks away slowly...]

Ants Ants Ants - "Blue" [YouTube]

Video: "I Had a Rooster" - Red Yarn (World Premiere!)

Once you've woken up to a "Beautiful Day," what are you gonna do? Eat, of course! And so Red Yarn in "I Had a Rooster" visits all the animals on his farm, feeds them the greenberry tree, and all the animals are vocally responsive. (You know, "meow meow... neigh neigh...")

I really like the uptempo Red Yarn take on the traditional barnyard song from his Wake Up & Sing album, and his video once again features many puppet-y friends. My favorite this time is the horse jammin' out on the drums. Enjoy this video (directed by Jeff Speetjens and featuring a bunch of puppeteers) for "I Had a Rooster," world-premiered here!

Red Yarn - "I Had a Rooster" [YouTube]

Video: "Black Footed Ferret" - The Whizpops

Last fall, I clued you in to a sweet animated video for "Manta Ray" by Montana kindie band The Whizpops. The video was premiered on the SciShow Kids channel, and nearly six months later, the band's getting a second video premiere from fellow Montanan Hank Green and his merry band of YouTube educators.

The video is for "Black Footed Ferret," and I think it's an even better match of song and video than the first pairing. In addition to the song, which veers from Billy Joel/Steely Dan jazzy piano pop to rap and back again, the video neatly complements the story the song tells about black footed ferrets' tenacious and tenuous grip on survival as a species.

Also, in addition to the animation, there are also puppets. I am ALWAYS thinking of the puppets.

In any case, the song is from The Whizpops' forthcoming album, Ranger Rick's Trail Mix Vol. 1, due out May 20, and the band is clearly continuing down the nature-tainment path they've forged on their recent albums. Hopefully there are a couple more videos as cute as this one on the drawing board.

The Whizpops - "Black Footed Ferret" [YouTube]

Monday Morning Smile: "I Believe in Little Things" - Diana Panton

What was it I said last week? "More joy." Well, Joe Raposo makes just about everything more joyful.

Canadian jazz musician Diana Panton turned to Raposo for the title track to her kid-friendly album I Believe in Little Things. The album was originally released in September 2015, but is going to get a bigger push here south of the Canadian border in 2016, and with tracks like the title track, I think it'll be well-received in the kindie world.

The video for "I Believe in Little Things" is charming and whimsical, and Panton's warm and clear voice elegantly lays out Raposo's masterful lyrics, with Jacqui Lee's illustration a perfect fit. Definitely an album to look forward to (or hear now, if you don't want to wait).

Diana Panton - "I Believe in Little Things" [YouTube]

Video: "The Skunk and The Robot" - Ratboy Jr.

I've always appreciated the low-key offbeat humor of New York duo Ratboy Jr. -- Timmy Sutton and Matty Senzatimore sing songs that would remind you of Roald Dahl or Shel Silverstein if they were both gentler and perhaps a little less sentimental.

So there's not much of a reason why I like "The Skunk and The Robot," a video off their latest album Hamster Dance except that it features, well, a skunk. And a robot. It's Ratboy Jr. in video form. (And if you don't like skunks or robots, there's always "Sponges," which features Timmy and Matty in puppet form.)

Ratboy Jr. - "The Skunk and The Robot" [YouTube]

Video: "Bird and Rhino" - The Pop Ups

Let's wrap up this (unofficial) Day of The Pop Ups -- sort of a pop-up Pop Ups site -- here at Zooglobble on a visual note. We've had a review of Great Pretenders Club, the first kids music album to be released exclusively on Amazon Music. And we've interviewed Jason Rabinowitz how the album came about and what we can expect in the future.

One of those things we can expect is a video for each of the album's 11 tracks. The first video, for the track "Bird and Rhino," is already here. It's purposefully slightly lo-fi animation nicely captures the track's occasional zaniness. If you're going to stomp that fire out with a funnily voiced Rhino, that's not exactly something that cries out for verisimilitude.

You can watch the video directly on Amazon's website, but seeing as Amazon Music also has its own (embeddable) YouTube channel, let's go with that.

The Pop Ups - "Bird and Rhino" [YouTube]