Director Andrew Schneider’s video for “Traffic,” a darkly jittery track from Lushes’ great What Am I Doing, takes a somewhat literal tack in that it finds the Brooklyn math-rock scrapers driving around NYC. “Traffic,” get it? There’s a little more to it than that, though, as Schneider explains:

The song “Traffic” playfully deals with modern anxiety in all its forms, all the little things that can make us blow up and all the tricks we have to calm us down afterward. Instead of making a more abstract video, we decided to take it back to the source of the song, by shooting Lushes driving around in New York City.

The focus is kept keenly on the emotions etched in their faces — boredom, anger, fatigue, hilarity, cabin fever, calm, road rage, and finally disbelief that this is the world we’ve built for ourselves. The final shot in Times Square stands in stark contrast to the floating beauty of the song’s end, suggesting the mood of the place in all its bright, alluring emptiness.

Watch “Traffic” below.

What Am I Doing is out now on Felte. Order it here, and check out Lushes on tour in Europe this fall:

10/29 London, UK @ Tooting Tram
10/30 Paris, FR @ La Mécanique Ondulatoire
11/01 Nantes, FR @ Festival Soy
11/02 Lille, FR @ La Malterie
11/03 Brussels, BE @ VRT, Studio Brussel Duyster (Radio Session)
11/04 Leverkusen, DE @ Struppig Tanzen
11/05 Nuremburg, DE @ Musikzentrale
11/06 Ghent, BE @ Trefpunt (Autumn Falls Festival)
11/07 Asse, BE @ ‘t Smiske (Autumn Falls Festival)