Dan Boeckner has bounced from band to band over the past 15 years, making the biggest splash with Wolf Parade—which is back together after a long hiatus—but also making excellent records as part of Handsome Furs and Divine Fits, the latter a co-lead with Spoon’s Britt Daniel. Boeckner’s latest thing is Operators, which doesn’t sound miles away from his other projects—definitely a compliment. Operators stopped by for their A.V. Undercover shoot just days before the release of their excellent debut album, Blue Wave. The band—which also features drummer Sam Brown (New Bomb Turks, Divine Fits), electro-whiz Devojka, and bassist Dustin Hawthorne—took on Nena’s “99 Luftballoons,” the German smash hit from the early ‘80s that also found lots of ears in translation in subsequent years. Boeckner dug deep into the song; check out his thoughts about its meaning in the accompanying interview.