Alvvays’ Blue Rev … some out there (us) would say it’s the best album of 2022. It also has a notable fan in the form of Stardew Valley creator and jack-of-all-trades Eric Barone, better known to his video game acolytes as ConcernedApe. In our Under The Influence interview with Alvvays’ Molly Rankin, she talked about how Stardew Valley influenced the creation of the album, and the band asked Barone to create a music video for them.

“It’s not every day I get an email from a cool band like Alvvays,” he said in a statement, continuing:

When I learned they were fans of Stardew Valley, it felt like a real honor. The whole album is fantastic, but the song ‘Many Mirrors’ had a pure, adventurous energy to it that really resonated with me. I took that feeling, and used it to create a visual world in my mind’s eye… and that’s what ultimately turned into this video. I had a lot of fun making it, and I’m really happy to be able to contribute, in a small way, to the band’s story!

“It’s just so good and you can disappear into another universe,” Rankin said of the game when we talked to her. “Maybe we’re subconsciously looking to live on farms and don’t even know it, because I have so many friends who dove headfirst into Stardew Valley. It’s so adorable and oddly fulfilling, to grow crops and raise farm animals and interact with the village folk.”

“It’s also very simple. It’s very deep, but it’s pretty user-friendly,” she continued. “I’m not much of a gamer, but I think I actually had to replace a joystick because of Stardew Valley. That’s how much I was playing. So, if you ever need someone to install a new joystick on your Nintendo Switch, I can do that for you.”

Watch the “Many Mirrors” video below.

Blue Rev is out now via Polyvinyl. ConcernedApe is hard at work on Stardew Valley‘s follow-up Haunted Chocolatier.