Dan Smith Gets a Buzz Cut in Bastille’s “Quarter Past Midnight” Music Video

Haircuts are supposed to make a statement, so why not film it? About 20 seconds into Bastille’s music video, released today, for their latest single “Quarter Past Midnight,” lead vocalist Dan Smith shaved his head—or more accurately, had his head shaved. The video takes the line in the chorus, “Help me piece it all together,” and expands it into a number of settings that the video rotates through, and this head shaving occurs in just one of the scenarios Smith seems to wake into.

As the video flips between settings, it is the color the moment is washed in that immediately tips the viewer off about the change. There’s a blue-lit party, a red-lit scene with drag queens, the flickering green of a dilapidated bathroom, and Dan illuminated in yellow while handcuffed next to a couple making out (they’re also handcuffed)—to name the most distinctive. As Smith is dropped into these new settings, he seems startled and out of place—unsure of how he got there. The recurring line “Help me piece it all together,” asks how these seemingly unrelated moments fit together. At one point, Smith even drops into a fuzzy, pixelated birthday home video.

The energy of the song is heightened by the whirlwind of scene changes at the end of the music video—Smith donning blue war paint across his eyes also appears towards the end. The video concludes with Smith startling awake on the couch in a warmly lit, rundown apartment—all is similar in appearance to the first scene of the video, except Smith is now alone and, of course, has a buzzcut.

You can watch the music video below and listen to Bastille’s Daytrotter performance from 2012 further down.