Trent Reznor’s side project connects with a veteran director of film and video.

Australia’s John Hillcoat is the award-winning director of such bleak films as The Proposition, Lawless, and The Road. Before his film career, however, he directed music videos for the likes of Depeche Mode and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

‘Ice Age’ is the most affecting cut off An omen_, the new EP from Reznor’s How to destroy angels_. The Hillcoat-directed video finds the band working through the seven-minute folk ballad in a dusty cabin, and focuses on vocalist Mariqueen Maandig (Reznor appears to be playing some sort of zither in the background).

The cabin is icy and secluded and is eventually awash in the lights of aurora borealis. As the song climaxes, the visual dissolves into something digitized and pixelated, mixing in fragments of lo-fi home movies as the titular ice age begins. The band’s debut full length is due out in the spring.