This is shaping up to be an epic year for musician Brendan Benson.
Last winter, the Raconteurs rocker announced the formation of a new label: Readymade Records, launched in partnership with Emily White of Whitesmith Entertainment. And a few months ago, Readymade released its first two records — one by Benson, titled What Kind of World, and one by Young Hines, dubbed Give Me My Change.
I dug Benson’s new sounds right away — in fact, at South By Southwest (check out my 12 favorite SXSW bands, and my 5 favorite SXSW songwriters), I singled out one of his new cuts (“Bad For Me”) as one of the festival’s top highlights:
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/34279967″ iframe=”true” /]
Now Benson returns with the moody and macabre music video for his song “Pretty Baby” — a dark vision of guns, hounds and fatal head wounds:
Directed by none other than Benson’s colleague Young Hines (you can give that Readymade newcomer a listen below), the “Pretty Baby” video is a bit bloodier — and scorched — than I might have expected, given the low-key rumble of the song. What did you think?
Steven James Snyder is a Senior Editor at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @thesnydes. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page, on Twitter at @TIME and on TIME’s Tumblr.