Arctic Monkeys Crash a Biker Sex Party in NSFW ‘Arabella’ Video

Arctic Monkeys‘ latest video opens with a “Parental Advisory” warning. And while there certainly is nudity and scenes of what appear to be a motorcycle gang’s sex orgy (you know, a usual Saturday night for the Monkeys) in the clip for “Arabella,” a track off last year’s AM, the video is mostly an artistic affair. Filmed in black and white by director Jake Nava (Beyoncé‘s “Single Ladies,” System of a Down’s “B.Y.O.B.”), the video has a noire-like, vintage look that plays into frontman Alex Turner’s lyrics about a woman who is a “Seventies head” in a “cheetah-print coat” with a swimsuit that reminds him of Jane Fonda’s titular sexpot in the Sixties sci-fi epic Barbarella.

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The vintage-stylized video is the sort of rootsy move you would expect from a man who recently defended the principles of rock & roll, which he did in an acceptance speech at the BRIT Awards last month. “That rock and roll, it seems like it’s fading away sometimes, but it will never die,” he said at the ceremony, where the group won British Album of the Year for AM and Best British Group last month. “And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Recently, the group put that attitude into a cover of a song by the Beatles – whose “Helter Skelter” is referenced in “Arabella” – when the group covered “All My Loving” at Madison Square Garden. As it happened, they were taking advantage of a certain anniversary the Fab Four were celebrating in February. “So apparently almost to the day, I believe, it’s 50 years since Ed Sullivan first brought the Beatles to the United States,” Turner said. “We thought, seeing as we’re in New York, as they were all those years ago, that we’d play a little Beatles song for you tonight. Apparently one in three Americans actually watched that performance, so if we’re lucky one or three Americans might watch this YouTube video.”