2016–present
McCarrol scored Johnson's 2016 film Operation Avalanche. McCarrol and Johnson adapted Nirvana the Band the Show into a television series, Nirvanna the Band the Show, which premiered on Viceland in 2017. Two seasons aired across 2017 and 2018. A third season was partially produced but not released due to Viceland's discontinuation.
In April 2016, during the 2016 United States presidential election, a supporter of Donald Trump uploaded a video featuring clips of Trump, with "Never Come Down" as a backing track, to YouTube. The clip ended up going viral, leading to the song becoming "a victory anthem of sorts" for Trump's supporters after he won the election.
In 2018, Brave Shores released La Hoo La La, their full-length debut album. In a press release for the album, McCarrol wrote:
"Never Come Down" was a song I wrote for a cell phone commercial, but it quickly went from television jingle to radio hit. What happened after, however, was even stranger — the song was adopted by online troll types as a sort of Donald Trump victory meme. It inspired the theme of the LHLL. Group mentality, division, indoctrination, power. The world is at once more connected and more divided than ever before. This album is an empathetic exploration of escape, apostasy, and self-discovery – it was a journey from beginning to end.
Johnson and McCarrol co-created and starred in the 2021 animated children's show Matt & Bird Break Loose, a spiritual successor to Nirvanna the Band the Show.
McCarrol scored Evan Morgan's 2020 film The Kid Detective, earning a nomination for Best Original Score at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards. McCarrol later won the award for Johnson's film BlackBerry (2023) at the 12th Canadian Screen Awards. He also scored Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard's 2023 film Hell of a Summer. McCarrol has recorded with and toured with Hayden. He wrote with Amy Millan on her 2025 album I Went To Find You, which he also produced.
Following the success of BlackBerry, McCarrol and Johnson received funding from Telefilm Canada to develop a feature film adaptation of Nirvanna the Band the Show—a project they had been workshopping as early as 2009. The film, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, was filmed throughout 2024; it was directed by Johnson and scored by McCarrol. The film makes use of "Never Come Down" as the signature song of McCarrol's character, who becomes a successful musical artist in an alternate timeline. It premiered on March 9, 2025 at South by Southwest, to what was described as "rapturous reception".
The film won critical acclaim and was nominated for the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award at the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards 2025. At the 14th Canadian Screen Awards, the film received eight nominations and won Best Motion Picture. McCarrol also won Best Lead Performance in a Comedy Film, while he and Johnson received the award for Best Original Song for "The Alphabet Song".
McCarrol and Johnson reprised their roles in the 2026 short film Nirvanna the Band Tries to Get an Animation Made, written and directed by YouTube creator Joel Haver.
