Synopsis

A bullet-riddled stranger awakens among cactus fields and begins a slow, disoriented journey through a small Mexican town. Leaving bloody handprints behind him, he passes unsettling glimpses of everyday life before reaching a motel room, where he tries to remove the bullets lodged in his body. The four-minute modern Western unfolds with a dry, dreamlike tension, balancing the song's lonely country-blues mood against increasingly strange imagery. Its final reveal shifts the story into unexpectedly surreal territory, transforming the traveler's grim ordeal into something more mysterious.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was shot in and around Tlayacapan, in the Mexican state of Morelos.

• Budget limitations meant that only a small core team traveled from Los Angeles, with local crew members brought in to complete the production.

• Isaac Ravishankara plays the wounded traveler. He was also associated with the video's production team.

• The motel sequence uses pliers and practical body-horror imagery rather than relying entirely on digital effects.

• The visual style was presented as a modern Western, matching the song's lap steel and alt-country character.

• The video's surreal ending was deliberately kept out of promotional descriptions so that viewers could encounter the twist without advance warning.

• "Waking World" appears on the album "Nights & Weekends," released by White Iris Records on February 26, 2013.

• The song features Nikki Lane in a duet with El Sportivo & The Blooz frontman Daron Hollowell.

• Hollowell said the song grew from a daydream about visiting an old girlfriend and imagining a conversation with her.

• The production credits include cinematographer Sebastian Wintero, production designer Geo Martinez, and visual-effects artists Diego Dominguez, Sebastian Brown, and Cameron Clark.