The New Pornographers Share Cuba-Set Video for ‘Champions of Red Wine’

The New Pornographers released a new Cuba-set video for their Brill Bruisers single "Champions of Red Wine" today (May 28), and you can watch it below. The clip was helmed by directorial duo LeBlanc + Cudmore, and it follows a "prehistoric man" during an existential crisis:

Scott Cudmore interprets the video thusly:

Obviously there’s a debt to the Paris, Texas locale of peep shows here and that was sort of the jumping off point for the video. I had this idea of a rambling, drunk loner in a foreign environment - somebody who can’t really connect to anything except for on a very superficial level. All the interactions he has are forced, more like transactions than anything. It’s a portrait of this guy, a few hours, a couple of days, in his life as he flails wildly around - his only means of communication being physical. The video is a fragment of this character. We only know him in the moment, not where he comes from or where he is going.

Since the United States lifted travel sanctions on Cuba early this year, enterprising entertainers, including Conan O'Brien and the Roots' Questlove, have flocked to the island nation to embrace and explore the culture that had previously been inaccessible to Americans. The New Pornographers' current tour features no stops in the country, but they are performing a string of dates in Europe before returning to North America in June. Their complete itinerary is available at their website.