Normally, we wouldn’t really classify The Flaming Lips as all that weird. Sure, they sing songs about pink robots and have people cavort onstage in animal costumes, but by definition, if your music is regularly played on KCRW, sorry–you’re just not that weird.

But tonight, Stephen Colbert had the Lips on as his musical guest, and he specifically told Wayne Coyne, “You guys are weird.” Good enough for us! You’re in, Lips. Just don’t think this means you can start coasting again on that bland power-pop you crapped out on At War with the Mystics.

KCRW rotation aside, we guess it’s actually pretty fair to characterize these Oklahoma boys as weird. After all, it’s not every band that releases an album of four CDs meant to be played simultaneously or writes a song for the Spongebob Squarepants soundtrack called “Spongebob and Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy.” Gotta admit, it’s never hard to Google a Lips song.

By now, everyone’s seen images of Wayne rolling around the audience in the giant transparent ball and the people dressed up in panda suits romping around the stage…so to give you an idea of how weird the Lips are capable of being, here’s a video from one of their 1996 “boom box experiments.” We’ll let a very young Wayne explain:

Links:

• Flaming Lips official site
• Flaming Lips on MySpace