Synopsis

An alien infant crash-lands in the New Mexico desert, where a strange, tinfoil-wrapped astronaut with an enormous eye for a head discovers it. The astronaut carries the baby through a nightmarish landscape populated by naked, glitter-covered bodies and gruesome wreckage. As the journey continues, the child becomes part of a bizarre cosmic ritual involving identity, rebirth and dismemberment. The deliberately shocking finale turns the baby into a grotesque symbol of Justin Vernon, whose stolen identity is at the center of Wayne Coyne's surreal science-fiction story.

Factoids & Trivia

• Wayne Coyne explained that the faceless baby represents Justin Vernon, whose identity has supposedly been taken by demons from space. The astronaut's eye-vagina character is presented as a cosmic authority trying to restore that identity.

• Coyne's explanation places the crash near Burning Man in New Mexico. The bloodied, naked figures are described as festivalgoers caught in the spaceship's impact after watching the giant Burning Man burn.

• A visual-effects breakdown credited Shelby Stong with replacing faces, adding blood and gore, and painting out parts of the backgrounds.

• The video was released on April 2, 2013, almost a year after "Ashes in the Air" first appeared on The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends.

• The song itself was assembled remotely. Coyne and Vernon exchanged musical parts through email and other messages before meeting in person.

• The clip is notably more graphic than a conventional promotional video and was widely presented as NSFW because of its nudity, body horror and violent climax.