Cass McCombs' new video for "Opposite House," featuring Angel Olsen, is as strange and uncertain as the song itself. "The ceiling is on the floor / Floor in the refrigerator," McCombs sings as a man and woman blow high, arcing streams of tea at one another. "What of the door? / It's there no more." The imagery is surreal and vaguely suggestive; the tea streams flit and flow together, evoking sperm swimming toward an egg.

"For most of my ideas I try to balance beauty and silliness," director Jonny Look says in a statement announcing the video. "It's a kind of an inside joke — something that will hopefully make you chuckle at the very end. I wanted to present the video as though it could all be real — as though we found some 'Tea Blowers' to perform as a backdrop to Cass and Angel's performance. I wanted the viewer to be amazed after the first trick, stunned at the second and then confused by the third. Hopefully by then they feel in on the joke."

"Opposite House" is from Cass McCombs' latest full-length album, Mangy Love.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit NPR.

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