Bon Iver may call Wisconsin home, but the dreamlike video for his new single “Calgary” is more Minnesotan. For one, it’s co-directed by Dan Huiting, a Minneapolitan who has shot a ton of concert footage for MPLS.TV. For another, its star is Minnesota native and America’s Next Top Model Cycle 14 winner Raina Hein. The video, largely set in a swampy wilderness, draws heavily on films from the same late-80s period that, musically inspires the song’s smooth-rock sonic textures. Hein’s character descends through smoke, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors-style, into a quasi-magical 1980s everybog (pick your reference point: The NeverEnding Story‘s swampland; Labyrinth‘s Pit of Eternal Stench; The Princess Bride‘s Fire Swamp). She continues to wander through this dreamscape, emerging aboveground, meeting a man, and giving a Viking funeral to a heartlike rock. Then a stuffed bear on a bed gets upside-down un-buried:
We have no clue. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver wrote the treatment—ask him. We just love the song.
Bon Iver, Bon Iver is set for release a week from today.
