Learn to dance "The Black Jack White" in Spirit Animal's new video.

What's that old saying? "Tell a man how to dance and he'll dance for a night, but show him how to dance and he'll dance for a lifetime?" Something like that. That's the principle at work in Spirit Animal's "The Black Jack White" video, the latest cut from the band's Kingdom Phylum EP. While the New York four-piece taught us the steps to their strutting funk and rock 'n' roll track a few months back, now that we've seen the official video, it's all finally coming together.

Watch Spirit Animal's "The Black Jack White" video after the jump.

Directed by Daniel Stessen, the striking black-and-white clip is all leather and lace and thrusting 2x4s (which, um, we think might be a symbol for something else), and features vocalist Steve Cooper and a lineup of vaguely domineering-looking dancers performing the song's moves. And if all that wasn't enough to help you understand, the steps are slowed down and highlighted by floating outlines of movement, kind of like a live-action comic book panel.

"Rock 'n' roll embodies the whole of modern music's spirit, but you can't have one without the other," Cooper said in a press release. "The roll is the part people sometimes forget, and that's sad since that's the party part." Yeah, it would be pretty hard to lose sight of that important element while watching this video.

"Take a step to the left and right, the left and right," Cooper explains, as he glides across a stark-white backdrop in some killer silver kicks. "Throw your hands straight up in the sky, like amusement ride. Next your head, you point it at your feet, and stick your arm to the side. And shake your hand like it's gone to sleep, and that's 'The Black Jack White.'"

"Show, don't tell," is always solid advice. Just try not to lose focus when the video cuts to retro-looking toys and figurines, old cellphones, calculators, and other assorted detritus of the band and the director's twisted imagination. It's going to be hard, we know, but we can all get through this together.

+ Watch Spirit Animal's "The Black Jack White" video.

Photo credit: Spirit Animal