Broken Bells Live Out Close Encounters in Their UFO-Themed ‘Control’ Video

Space is the place once again in the new Broken Bells video, which finds the duo of James Mercer and Danger Mouse exploring the final frontier with a slew of found footage as they perform “Control,” off their latest collaboration, After the Disco.

Although the clip doesn’t have much to do with the epic alien love story the duo told in the “Holding On for Life” video, it features clips of Broken Bells cranking out the funky, punch-drunk cut alongside a montage space-related footage, from sun flares and moon missions, to crop circles and pictures supposed UFOs ”“ some of which feature the spiky pink sphere that’s become the duo’s emblem.

The “Control” clip has plenty to excite the Mulder in everybody who yearns to believe, and as scientist George Wald reminds us at the beginning: “I think there’s no question that we live in an inhabited universe that has life all over it.”

Released back in February, After the Disco followed up Broken Bells’ self-titled 2010 debut, and their 2011 EP, Meyrin Fields. The album found the two halves of Broken Bells at interesting points in their lives: While becoming a husband and father was stabilizing Mercer’s life, Bryan “Danger Mouse” Burton continued to navigate the uncertainty of being single and growing older. While this mixture helped bring about the album’s potent blend of highly danceable tunes rife with dark themes, the music was also inspired by Broken Bells’ mutual fascination with sci-fi and the way people in the past imagined the future.

“We’ve been dealing with a lot of the science-fiction elements of things,” Burton told Rolling Stone ahead of the album’s release. “James and I are very fascinated with what people in the Fifties and Sixties thought now was gonna be like. That’s where a lot of that came from.”