Broken Bells Blast Off With 'Mad Men' Star in New Video

Posted on Jun 8th 2010 3:00PM by Mike Ayers
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As we previously noted, Broken Bells went big-time in rounding up 'Mad Men' star Christina Hendricks to appear in the video for their second single, 'The Ghost Inside.' In various interviews since, Broken Bells guitarist/vocalist James Mercer has expressed his disbelief that she'd even be up for it. But she clearly is -- Hendricks dons a space suit, travels the intergalactic highway dodging asteroids and reconfigures her body parts along the way.

But something goes terribly awry, casting our heroine into a comatose state. She's finally resuscitated only when she's discovered by two friendly space travelers, who then help her complete the rest of her mission. The main aspect of 'The Ghost Inside' is a depiction of a woman who "gives it up, for that dollar." One could hypothesize that prostitution was on Broken Bells' minds when they wrote this, but the video hints that it might be something more about searching for fame -- or a quick, yet expensive getaway at the very least.

"We try to shy away from giving too literal of meanings on songs," Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton) tells Spinner about 'The Ghost Inside.' "There's three different of kind of melodies and sections in the song itself. There's [James] doing the falsetto and then there's the doubled kind of bridge and then there's the outro that really sounds like, you know, very James Mercer. It turned into this longer song, but it was one of the last songs we did."

Watch the video for 'The Ghost Inside' below.