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Watch Bon Iver’s ‘Beth/Rest’ Video, a New Age Dream

Bon Iver 'Beth/Rest' Video

At last, there’s a music video as white and New Agey as “Beth/Rest,” Bon Iver’s 2011 album-closer, which SPIN lovingly described as “a straight-up soft-rock ballad set atop Doogie Howser electric piano.” The new clip for the oldish song features glowing people hanging orbs from trees, floating in vine baskets, trying on different cloaks, walking through the cosmos, and levitating — no big. Plus, there’s a band cameo that finds Justin Vernon and co. swathed in mist, making merry by playing sometimes odd instruments in mid-air. Huffington Post premiered the Vernon and Dan Huiting-directed clip for the Bon Iver epilogue, which, as they strongly emphasize, was dubbed “the most divisive song of 2011” by NPR. In NPR’s universe, that might be true, but NPR didn’t actually say that. Vernon, however, did say this, via statement, about the video: “It’s kind of about two people who are truly meant for each other and what happens to their essence. How they connect is some other thing that we don’t know how to really talk about.” Shaka brah.