As a “surprise gift,” according to the band’s official YouTube channel, the White Stripes received a new music video treatment for the song “City Lights” directed by their friend and longtime collaborator Michel Gondry.
The premise of the video is simple, but imaginative: In it, somebody in a shower playfully draws faces, planes, and trees on the glass shower door, as the condensation allows the earlier drawings to fade.
Jack White recently shared the previously unreleased track, ahead of his new album, Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016, which includes previously unreleased and new mixes from The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and his own solo music.
The video is director Gondry’s fifth visual collaboration with The White Stripes. He also directed “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” “Fell in Love with a Girl,” “Hardest Button to Button” and “The Denial Twist.” In the past he’s teamed up with Bjork, The Chemical Brothers and Beck, in addition to writing and directing feature films. In 2005, he won an Academy Award for writing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
“City Lights” was written for The White Stripes’ Get Behind Me, Satan, but then was forgotten until Jack White revisited the 2005 album for Third Man’s Record Store Day 2015 vinyl reissue and put the finishing touches on the recording this year. The track is the first new, worldwide commercially released song by The White Stripes since 2008.
Watch the Gondry-directed video for “Fell in Love with a Girl” below: