Deichkind Still Here

The new Deichkind video has everyone hopping around like their triangles never went out of style. Five guys of a certain age, no sense of fashion, and somehow still making music that matters to people who absolutely should have moved on by now.

I can’t forgive Deichkind for Leider Geil. That song somehow outlived its own decade, which is the worst kind of immortality—drunk guys on the U-Bahn forever, every Friday night, screaming those lyrics like a personal anthem. But I remember when they were good. Ich betäube mich, Komm schon, Bon Voyage. They made music that felt dangerous, or at least clever. Then somewhere around 2010 they started taking themselves seriously. Blinking traffic cones, gallery openings, the whole retreat into art. It felt like watching a friend get pretentious.

So ’ne Musik is exactly what you’d expect from them now—solid, slick, completely self-aware. The video looks expensive. They clearly still have that weird kind of reach, that cultish devotion. The new album’s called Niveau Weshalb Warum and the track titles alone (Der Flohmarkt Ruft, Porzellan Und Elefanten, Oma Gib Handtasche) feel like they’re in on the joke about how ridiculous German music culture can be. Or maybe they’re past jokes entirely and that’s just what songs are called now.

I don’t know if I’ll listen to the whole thing. But I watched the video, and I remembered why they got under people’s skin in the first place—that mix of stupidity and intelligence, the refusal to choose a lane. They’re still that band. Just older.