Battles - “The Yabba” (Official Video)

Next week, the great math-rock power trio Battles returns with the new album La Di Da Di, their first in four years. This morning, they’ve unveiled the Roger Guàrdia-directed video for “The Yabba,” the hard-grooving seven-minute first single. This is a band that only ever makes great videos, and the new clip is just the latest example. It opens with an image of an unnaturally still woman, in ’70s costume, spinning a basketball on her finger. But the clip mostly focuses on the three members of the band, hard at work, bashing out the song in an outdoor desertscape or surrounded by their own light screens. Sometimes, they’re surrounded by a group of creepily expressionless onlookers. None of it seems to mean anything, exactly, but it all makes for an evocative spectacle.