Chris Smith offers a welcome corrective to the misconception that the band from industrial Ohio were one-hit wonders or that their eccentricities didn’t have philosophical foundations.

In one of many flavorful TV interview excerpts from the band’s prime in Devo, they identify themselves as aliens who have come down to Earth in UFOs with the aim of cultural infiltration. With their red plastic “energy dome” flowerpot helmets and utilitarian uniforms that look like kids’ home-made spacesuits, the group could almost pass for interplanetary messengers, preaching change as an urgent gospel for late 20th century America in rapid regression. As one member says: “We already felt like humans were insane, so for people to be enlightened, something had to happen.”

At one point after the group’s classic lineup had undergone changes, a former Sparks drummer joined. Smith’s film has elements in common with Edgar Wright’s ecstatic 2021 celebration of that art pop duo, The Sparks Brothers, in its energized montage, but also in the fact that idiosyncratic humor is an essential element of both groups’ music and that neither band was terribly good at playing the corporate game or showed much consistent interest in commercial success.

The thing Smith’s film makes clear up front is that people who hit the dance floor to Devo’s caffeinated synth-pop generally gave little thought to their message, hatched out of the concept of “de-evolution.” Key early influences ranged from an illustrated 1924 satirical anti-evolution tract, Jocko-Homo Heavenbound — which gave them the title of a 1977 B-side and a view of humankind as mutant apes — to the 1932 sci-fi movie Island of Lost Souls, its humanoid beast chant yielding the title of their first album in 1978, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!

The nucleus of Devo came out of the Kent State University art student scene, with two sets of brothers, Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh and Gerald and Bob Casale, alongside Alan Myers. The initially jokey de-evolution idea gained seriousness in the wake of the Kent State shootings. With the National Guard killing student protesters and Nixon circumventing Congress to expand the Vietnam War into Cambodia, the impression of America moving backwards gained credence.

But art was as much a part of the band’s inspiration as politics, particularly European movements between the World Wars, like Dada and Surrealism, incorporated into an approach that was post-structuralist, absurdist and philosophical.

Around the same time, the band started developing variations on its signature look, with work coveralls, plastic goggles or masks and safety helmets, inspired by their hometown of Akron’s history as rubber capital of America, when tire manufacturers like Firestone were based there. Their stage costumes would eventually run to surgical masks and scrubs, stocking head coverings, molded black plastic wigs that were mistakenly interpreted as “Reagan hairdos,” and even opticians’ examination specs worn by Mark, who was legally blind before having glasses prescribed in grade school.

The band became pioneers of music video before MTV. The first film they made won a prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which gained them further exposure on the circuit, eventually paving the way for gigs in influential New York clubs CBGB and Max’s Kansas City. Their audiences included Debbie Harry, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, John Waters, Iggy Pop and Leonard Cohen. John Lennon reportedly gave them a non-verbal roar of approval at the end of a show.

Somewhere in there, Devo also hired their first manager, on the condition he could get them onto Saturday Night Live. They describe that experience as “like a horror movie,” with Lorne Michaels in the scary role. But they played a sped-up version of their Stones cover, “Satisfaction,” reaching their first nationwide audience.