Watch Alex Karpovsky in MGMT’s Macabre New Video For ‘When You Die’
A hapless magician watches his life rewind before his eyes in the new video for MGMT‘s “When You Die.” The track marks the group’s latest offering from their next album, Little Dark Age, set to arrive in 2018.
Mike Burakoff and Hallie Cooper-Novack directed the video, which stars Girls actor Alex Karpovsky as an amateur magician. His final performance ends in tragedy after he fails to impress a crowd and a stage light falls from the ceiling and kills him.
As MGMT pluck the song’s strange pop melody, Karpovsky’s character goes into a psychedelic purgatory. Patterns and textures retell his final moments, which he’s forced to relive for eternity. The surreal effect was created with Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Style Transfer technology that imposed images onto video footage.
Prior to “When You Die,” MGMT shared the title-track for Little Dark Age. An exact release date for the album has yet to be announced. Little Dark Age follows MGMT’s 2013 self-titled effort, and the duo recorded the new record with producers Patrick Wimberly (Chairlift, Kelela) and Dave Fridmann – who also produced their debut Oracular Spectacular – during sessions in New York and Los Angeles.