Michel Gondry Directed IDLES’ New “Model Village” Video

Michel Gondry Directed IDLES’ New “Model Village” Video

IDLES, the extremely popular British rock band with big reply-guy energy, are ramping up to the release of their new album Ultra Mono. They’ve already shared three songs from the LP — “Mr. Motivator,” “Grounds,” and “A Hymn” — and today they share a fourth, complete with a video by legendary director Michel Gondry.

Gondry, the French surrealist best known for Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, has deep connections to the music world. He directed Dave Chappelle’s Block Party and iconic music videos for a long list of artists including Björk, Daft Punk, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, the Chemical Brothers, and many more. (He also did a White Stripes video that featured my colleague Tom Breihan as a body double for Conan O’Brien. No really, you can still read his two-part diary on the experience.)

Now he’s applied his unique perspective to “Model Village,” the dance-punky new IDLES single. Gondry worked with his brother Olivier Gondry and WeTransfer to create a bizarre animated sequence. “A lot of nine fingered boys in the village,” Joe Talbot begins in his muscular bark, before listing off quite a few other observations about said village. At the chorus, he gets loud: “I beg your pardon/ I don’t care about your rose garden/ I’ve listened to the things you said/ You just sound like you’re scared to death.”

Watch below.

Ultra Mono is out 9/25 on Partisan. Pre-order it here.

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