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See Unknown Mortal Orchestra Emasculate an Art Student in ‘From the Sun’

Unknown Mortal Orchestra 'From the Sun' Video II

Unknown Mortal Orchestra don’t mess around when it comes to music videos. In the first clip for their latest album II, McLovin waged bat-wielding war against a hippie cult. And then there was that thing with the adorable masturbating puppets. Now we have “From the Sun,” which also strikes a nice balance between oddly playful and entirely disturbing. Directed by Rick Alverson (the man behind The Comedy, starring James Murphy and Tim Heidecker), the video follows the awful misadventures of a young man who allows himself to be physically humiliated by a group of art-school kids — seemingly his peers. He takes a seat in a chair and is licked, slapped, spit upon, made up, thrown down, taped, gagged, decorated with trash, and bedecked with an egg. Meanwhile, the band delivers a pretty little psych-rock number that sounds like a mellower Of Montreal granted access to only the best vintage recording equipment. But the happily drifting sound is offset by Ruban Nielson’s words: “Isolation can put a gun in your hand / I’m so lonely I can never quite reach the phone.”