Synopsis

Dan Smith wanders through an eerily deserted Los Angeles, where the few people he encounters have unnaturally black, empty eyes. Trying to escape the spreading menace, he steals a car and heads into the California desert. When the vehicle breaks down, he climbs into the hills and surveys the landscape, only to discover that the strange transformation has reached him too. The video turns the song's ancient catastrophe into a modern, surreal story about isolation, collapse, and the fear of becoming part of an unfamiliar world.

Factoids & Trivia

• The official video was released on YouTube on January 20, 2013, ahead of "Pompeii"'s rise as Bastille's breakthrough single.

• Filming took place over two days in Los Angeles and Palm Springs. The production deliberately uses the sharp transition from the crowded city to the open desert as part of the video's visual progression.

• The black eyes are not a literal depiction of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Instead, the video adapts the song's themes into a contemporary horror image, making the ancient disaster feel like a spreading condition in the present day.

• Bastille described the concept as intentionally strange and dark, creating a contrast with the song's bright, highly singable arrangement. That tension between euphoric music and unsettling imagery became one of the video's defining qualities.

• Although the track is called "Pompeii," the video does not show the Roman city or recreate the eruption. The connection is thematic: both the song and the video focus on people confronting a world that has been permanently changed.

• The song itself was inspired by images of victims preserved after the eruption. Dan Smith wrote it as an imagined conversation between two people caught in the disaster, which helps explain the video's emphasis on isolation and emotional disconnection.

• A longer director's cut was released in March 2013, expanding the same escape narrative and adding to the video's cinematic feel.

• "Pompeii" peaked at No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart. In June 2014, it was reported as the most-streamed song in the United Kingdom at that point, and in November 2023 it passed one million UK sales.