Okkervil River, Texas rock band led by Will Sheff, have just released a brand new video for “Okkervil River R.I.P.” from their forthcoming album, Away. The idea for the clip is quite unusual: Sheff buries himself to visualise the lyrics of the song – an elegy to the band’s past years. In the statement about the new album the singer reflected on the difficult time the band has been through:

2013-2015 had been a strange time for me. I lost some connections in a music industry that was visibly falling apart. Some members of the Okkervil River backing band left, moving on to family life or to their own projects. I spent a good deal of time sitting in hospice with my grandfather, who was my idol, while he died. I felt like I didn’t know where I belonged. When there was trouble at home, a friend offered me her empty house in the Catskills where I could go and clear my head. New songs were coming fast up there, so I set myself the challenge of trying to write as many as possible as quickly as possible. I wasn’t thinking about any kind of end product; the idea was just to write through what I was feeling, quickly and directly. Eventually, I realized I was writing a death story for a part of my life that had, buried inside of it, a path I could follow that might let me go somewhere new.

The beautiful clip perfectly illustrates the emotional, contemplative mellow ballad. The video was written and directed by Sheff and beside himself, it also features actor Tim Blake Nelson as a priest.

Away will be released 9th September via ATO Records.