It was sort of an inside joke between two 12-year-olds. But when the duo grew up and left college, the joke became the moniker of their Chicago-based rock quartet.

Ready for a story? OK, go.

“We both went to summer camp together,” says Damian Kulash, guitarist and vocalist for OK Go. “That’s how we met at age 12.

“And we had this art teacher who was, like, this real stoner — kind of a 19-year-old superhippie. And he couldn’t really say anything except ‘OK, go.’ He would say some kind of ridiculous stoned pearl of wisdom —”

Kulash pauses to get into character.

“He’d be like, ‘Man, uh, I want you guys to, like, touch your inner eye and then touch your paper and then draw the difference,'” Kulash says. “And we were, like, 12 years old and we’d be drawing airplanes and stuff. And he’d say that, then he’d say ‘OK … OK … OK … OK, go.’ So we used to make fun of him.”

OK Go is also how Kulash describes the group’s music.

“[It’s] something that’s not disaffected and kind of hipster cool, but just a lot of fun,” he says.

Kulash says the band got its start by just having a lot of fun. OK Go was scheduled to be the backing band for National Public Radio’s “This American Life” in front of a live audience.

“We were invited to come play on the show but they didn’t have the means to record us,” he says.

The program organizers decided the band would have to lip-sync, Kulash says.

“We figured if we were going to have to do a lip-sync, you might as well go all the way,” he says. “Why pretend to play your instrument?”

Kulash and the boys decided to draw inspiration from MTV’s Total Request Live to try to learn the secrets of Backstreet Boys and *NSync.

They found out, he says, that the boy bands don’t really do a whole lot of dancing when they’re on TRL.

“So then we had to watch ESPN for awhile and found the cheerleading championships,” Kulash says. “Now there’s choreographed dancing.

“We took some cues from them, and we went back and watched some Kid ‘N Play videos and got the whole absurd dance thing down. It took us a week to learn it, and I think our drummer was in a knee brace for, like, three months after that.”

“We do make fools of ourselves from time to time,” Kulach jokes. “We have reenacted scenes from musicals.”

Kulach says he and bassist Tim Nordwind have occasionally performed songs onstage from their rap side project, which Kulach says is “admittedly terrible.”

Unfortunately, the band will not be re-enacting dance moves or freestyling onstage when they perform with The Donnas at 7 Flags Event Center, 2100 NW 100th St., Clive, on Friday. Kulash says they’ve retired the routine. Besides, he says, the whole notion is somewhat “anti-rock.”

Kulash says that although OK Go and The Donnas don’t share the same sound, they make a good combination.

“We share a similar shamelessness in our music,” Kulash says. “A lot of bands are postured and stylized. We were more about the exuberant fun of rock.”

Who: OK Go, The Donnas

Where: 7 Flags Event Center, 2100 NW 100th St., Clive

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday

Cost: $15