Alien Ant Farm are trending on Twitter, and the reason why might be slightly confusing. After all, the California alt-rock band has only released one studio album in the last decade. And it's been almost twice that time since the group hit the Hot 100 with their lively cover of Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal."

But it's the 2001 music video for that very song that has the rockers back in the Twittersphere. Users of the social networking service might have noticed Alien Ant Farm's "Smooth Criminal" clip on their feed over the weekend. And it looks like the throwback could be due to the coronavirus outbreak.

As pointed out by Heavy, however, not everyone on Twitter could finger why the group was trending. Still, others pointed to the appearance of a kid donning a very Michael Jackson-like surgical mask in the old video. ("COVID-19 safety management strategy dance courtesy of Alien Ant Farm," one tweet joked.)

The confusion online was so much that users searching for the reason behind the sudden Alien Ant Farm trend only drove it further forward. Talk about a viral outbreak.

The band's version of "Smooth Criminal" emerged on its second album ANThology, released in March 2001. The Jackson cover was the effort's lead single, and, at the time, it landed at No. 1 on Billboard's Alternative Songs Chart, No. 18 on Mainstream Rock and No. 23 on the genre-wide Hot 100.

Succeeding Alien Ant Farm songs didn't fare quite as well, although immediate follow-up "Movies" still made a dent. The parent album also spawned the single "Attitude" before the group's next collection truANT arrived in 2003.

In 2020, with the United States on the outset of coronavirus-related lockdown and rock musicians imposing quarantine, it looks like Alien Ant Farm were remembered best for "Smooth Criminal." And, these days, the group is still around — they last released the album Always and Forever in 2015.

Update: The band offered an update on their current plans while tweeting a response to this post. It can be read below:

Alien Ant Farm, "Smooth Criminal"