Mumford And Sons went to Graceland — as in: the South African musical landscape explored by Paul Simon on his culture-changing album Graceland — and came back with a collaborative quickie EP exploring Soweto textures and melodies with Baaba Maal, The Very Best and Beatenberg. This video is similarly off-the-cuff, and joyous, showcasing the individual performers wherever they happen to be.
Ditmas may be in refence to the Brooklyn neighborhood, but the view finds us in the lovely fields of the Kiev countryside with a horse-whispering warrior and a folk-turned-rock band performing in the round.
Alex Southam, director:: "The Cossack character (Evgeniy) in the video is a genuine cossack raised within a cossack community - part of his work now is to break and train horses so was the perfect subject for our film. Whilst the shoot was pretty brutal and unforgiving - particularly for our hero - we captured something really special, no more so than the moments in the final third of the video where our hero finally becomes one with the horse."
Mumford & Sons have at times been criticized as Instagram-filtered nostalgists who dress like docents at some Dust Bowl history center, but this latest clip from director Sam Jones steers the band straight into that skid and out the other side to the land of laughs.