Are animated car chase videos the new trend? After watching the new Gorillaz video for “Stylo,” it was hard to press play without a bored sigh. “This again?!”

Thankfully, the new MV from Balkan Beatbox feels totally different. Recorded in Tel Aviv and Belgrade during anti-Kosovo riots, the new record, Blue Eyed Black Boy, is suffused with the stuff of war and violence. Single “War Again” is a track about — you guessed it — the inevitable cycle of violence. So whereas the Gorillaz “Stylo” video is a bit of high-action fun with a campy cameo from Bruce Willis, the video for this track is much more serious.

Directed by award-winning animator Paul Griswold, the washed-out colors here are projected onto a kind of stony texture, mimicking the old rubble of the bombed out cities that BBB are singing about.

Self-produced by the band, the record features their typical mash-up of Mediterranean, gypsy, and rock sounds with a guest appearance from a Belgrade gypsy orchestra (the Jovica Ajdarevic Orkestar, if you were wondering). About recording in the midst or riots, Ori Kaplan, saxophone player, told their label:

“It was a very tense atmosphere, but we were in our studio, away from all that, translating that intense energy into something positive and good.”

Watch the video below:

War Again – Balkan Beat Box from Paul Griswold on Vimeo.

Still from animation by Paul Griswold