Las Vegas Weekly

January 29, 2010 · 5:15 PM

Searchlight goes Gaga

By April Corbin

Welcome to La Casa de Searchlight, where zombies clad all in white appear from futuristic space pods; a singer is unwillingly pulled from a bathtub and offered to a stoic person wearing a mask; and raised claw-hands are the salute of choice.

Oh, and don't forget about the creepy hairless cat.

Sound familiar? Good. It's supposed to.

Last week, local rockers Searchlight released a cover of Lady Gaga's vocal warm-up-esque track "Bad Romance." More impressively, the band shot a video that mirrors the strange and impressive one released by the pop phenomenon frame by freaky frame.

Searchlight's video is available on YouTube, as is a side-by-side comparing theirs to the original.

Most of Gaga's elements appear in the Searchlight parody — claw-heavy choreography, formfitting (form-strangling, perhaps) white costumes and a fashionable catwalk from front man Adam Michaels.

Searchlight does deviate at times to include the band's instruments, a few random action figures in the bathtub and some eye-drops for dramatic effect. Also, there's a sexy bed scene involving Michaels and one of La Casa's female inhabitants. Ooh la la!

The video proves that imitation is the highest form of flattery, and it gives fans of rock music a reason to know all the words to an infectious Lady Gaga song we suspect they already loved. For that, we raise our claws in salute to Searchlight.

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