Video Premiere: Dead Man's Bones' Haunting "Dead Hearts"

Dead Man's Bones' self-titled debut album is out today, and Rolling Stone is pleased to premiere the band's mesmerizing new video for "Dead Hearts." The duo, featuring actor Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields, directed the short film themselves, with a huge assist by production designer Jed Hathaway, who works on the stop-motion Adult Swim show Robot Chicken. While the tense, haunting "Dead Hearts" is slower and more deliberate than some of the album's tracks, the song perfectly soundtracks the striking visuals and sets the tone for the duo's frequent nods to old horror films on the album.

See more actors with rock-star chops.

The star of the video is "Machine With Wishbone," a moving sculpture created by artist Arthur Ganson (the band became fans after watching videos of his work while recording their album and reached out to ask if they could use one of his works). The clip tracks the Wishbone's Sisyphean journey as it wanders past burning barns and eerie graveyards. "Dead Hearts" also shares an aesthetic with the famed stop-motion short films by the Brothers Quay, as well as a hint of Tool videos from the early '90s.

Rolling Stone previously debuted the band's "In the Room Where You Sleep," a ghoulish blend of psychedelic-era pop that appropriately fused elements of the Zombies and the Misfits.

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Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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