Chinese American Bear announce new album 'Dim Sum & Then Some,' share new single

Last year, Chinese American Bear became a favorite around the Guerrilla Candy household with their catchy, bilingual pop songs and quirky videos.

It turns out that I’m not the only one who has caught on to the band’s pop prowess. The group recently received a $10,000 grant from Sonic Guild Seattle and are gearing up to release their third album, “Dim Sum & Then Some” which will be released May 8 on Moshi Moshi Records. The album is a blast of joy chock full of indie-pop gems with infectious vibes that perfectly capture the band’s trademark fun and playfulness.

Earlier this year the group released the single “No No Yeah Yeah (不不好啊好啊)” in advance of the album and today I am happy to share the video for the group’s latest single “All The People (所有人).”

“All The People (所有人) is probably my favorite song on the album,” Bryce Barsten, one half of Chinese American Bear said. “It’s so fun, light, cool, and a little weird. It’s a song for everyone. All the people. It has some fantasy vibes, musically and lyrically.”

Ann Tong, the other half of CAB, had this to say about the song:

“When Bryce first showed me the sounds for ‘All The People’, it immediately reminded me of a fantastical setting with castles and fairies so I leaned in that direction with the lyrics. It was fun to write about a topic we hadn’t explored much before. I’ve written a lot on our favorite foods and Chinese culture but hadn’t explored much fantasy. We’re actually both huge fans of fantasy in general. Bryce puts on the Lord of the Rings movies at least twice a month in our household, it’s his comfort background noise. I also recently started getting into ‘Romantasy’ so I was also in that mindset.”

From Spokane to Shanghai: Chinese American Bear’s cross-cultural indie pop journey

Like all things CAB does, the video for the song was a DIY effort. After all, the group’s ingenuity is part of their charm. Barsten directed the video using a stop-motion technique and hand-made puppets.

“The original idea for this music video was to build giant costumes for people to wear, but that quickly became too ambitious of an idea. Then it dawned on me one day to use puppets! It’d still have that tactile/physical feeling, and I could have multiple characters,” he said. “I made it in my parents basement actually, which feels hilarious to say. I felt like a little 12-year-old gremlin, working every day in the depths of the basement.”