King Whisker: “OB is so much our vibe.”

Local art-punks King Whisker filmed a video for their new single “Utopia” in late spring. The song is a commentary on how the world and life can be simultaneously beautiful and brutal. To hammer home this concept, they spent a day dressed as cavemen, running around Ocean Beach and Belmont Park.

“The video was a collaborative idea,” King Whisker singer/guitarist Charlie Rohlfs explains. “I think the caveman idea kind of came from me. It was really playing on the idea of what would this amazing world that we live in right now look like to cave people? You see those movies where somebody from the Middle Ages travels forward in time, and they are like, ‘Oh my god, a taxi! This is amazing!’ It’s both a play on that and also the fact that we’re still cavemen. We’re still ‘Ooga booga. Look at this. Kill! Kill!’ We’re really not that evolved as a species. We’re animals and we can make things and build things, but we’re still kind of cruel, dumb animals, just like everything else on this planet.”

The band shot the video guerilla-style minus permits, but had zero issues throughout the day. Rohlfs estimates that 80 percent of the shoot was done in OB. “It was just so much fun being out there dressed as cavemen and just running around like idiots, and nobody was scoffing,” he explains. “People were just stoked that we were out there having a good time. OB is so much our vibe. It’s the only place in San Diego where I feel like we could have done that.” In true San Diego fashion, there’s also a clip of the band on Newport Avenue, enjoying some massive burritos courtesy of Mike’s Taco Club. “You know in The Flintstones when they get a steak it’s always the size of a woolly mammoth? We kind of wanted to highlight San Diego and how we have caveman-sized burritos out here,” Rohlfs says.

Over at Belmont Park, the zaniness continued: the cavemen can be seen marveling at the Giant Dipper roller coaster, plus other park rides and flowers. They even squeeze in a game of air hockey for good measure. Rohlfs says there were numerous fitness influencers and Tik-tokers shooting videos at the park as well, so even with the caveman costumes, they may have just blended in among all the videographers. Even so, when the cops came by, “We would make sure we weren’t doing any weird shit. We wanted to get all the shots we wanted to get, so we didn’t want to get kicked out before we did.”

One highlight of the “Utopia” video is what Rohlfs describes as the “step-step-wiggle-wiggle-step-step-wiggle-wiggle” caveman dance that the band does at various points. Now, it shows up sometimes in their live shows, like during their recent afternoon set at Winstons, “The place was packed, which was really nice for an afternoon during a weekend. It was interesting playing for a big crowd of people where most of them didn’t know who we were. I think probably 80 percent of them hadn’t seen us play before, and we were doing all originals. It was the first time we had played a show in the daytime, and we learned some stuff about it. Onstage, we are very much absurdist and satirical. But there are walls that are up there during the day between the person and the band that aren’t up there at night. When you see a show at night, you get drunk, you get high, and you go dance. It’s different expectations, I think, from the crowd in the daytime. But it was a ton of fun.”

Expect more music, more videos, and more shows from King Whisker this year. Don’t get excited for a new album though: that’s 2025 territory. “We all have jobs,” Rohlfs explains. “Music is expensive and time-consuming. During the pandemic, we just sat in a room and recorded because we didn’t have anything else to do. Now, life is just different, so we are doing it at the pace that we can. We’re really trying to get to a place where, after this album drops, we have enough of a following and the streaming metrics that people care about so we can start booking at smaller festivals. That is the dream.”