Perhaps some of Radiohead’s notoriously devoted fans will recognize Thom Yorke’s girlfriend, Italian actress Dajana Roncione, in the opening of the band’s new music video for “Lift.” Accompanying her, and pushing all of the buttons on the lift, is Yorke’s daughter Agnes. These quick cameos represent just two of the Yorke-related Easter eggs in the clip, which recalls the uncanny spirit of late-’90s Radiohead in a slyly contemporary way.

The video’s director, Oscar Hudson, politely declines to spoil most of the visual references when we call him shortly after the clip’s release this morning. “I was aware of what Radiohead fans are like,” he says, with a warm laugh. “I wanted there to be some things to dig up in there, but I also wanted it to be a film in its own right.” Unlike most creators following a release, he’s actually looking forward to reading the comments online in the days to come. “I want people to do their own thinking, too.”

The last time Hudson and I spoke, he had just directed one of the 30-second visual vignettes around Radiohead’s 2016 album, A Moon Shaped Pool. This time around, Hudson’s clip plays out like an absurdist counterpart to Paul Thomas Anderson’s video for A Moon Shaped Pool’s “Daydreaming,” following Yorke as he interacts with notable passers-by in an elevator—including the purple-hatted character from the “Paranoid Android” video and a shoeless fellow familiar from “Karma Police.” With a song like “Lift,” certainly there’s reason for winking at Radiohead history: It’s the OK Computer hit that never was, a recording of which finally surfaced this year on the classic album’s 20th-anniversary reissue, OKNOTOK. “We wanted to try to walk a line with this video, somewhere between not looking back too much but also—you can’t ignore the history of the song,” he adds.

Hudson, whose “Homie” video for Young Thug and Carnage’s Young Martha project also surfaced in recent days, shot the clip with Yorke over the course of one day. The set took four times as long to build, though, with an entirely new one sliding into place every time the elevator doors shut. “Inside the lift it looks like a very calm thing,” Hudson says. “But outside it’s the most insane level of organized chaos you can imagine.” For all that intensity of effort, fans may want to remember that “Lift” ends with Yorke admonishing self-deprecatingly, “So lighten up, squirt.”

Pitchfork: How did this video come together?

Oscar Hudson: Radiohead came to myself and Michał Marczak, who also did one of the blips [around A Moon Shaped Pool, then directed OKNOTOK’s “I Promise” video]. When I first received the tracks, they came through slightly before the email saying, “Do you want to write an idea on these?” They were quite mysteriously labeled, and I didn’t know what they were initially. I listened to them and was like, “Oh wow, it’s new Radiohead music, but oh wow, it sounds like old Radiohead.” And I was dead confused for a bit, but then quickly realized it was these classic unreleased tracks.

Were you aware of the history of “Lift”?

Initially no. I’m a fan of Radiohead, but maybe I’m not that category of Radiohead fan that knows all the secret B-sides. To make a video for a band like Radiohead is always a little daunting, but especially when you’re doing it for a track that already occupies a space in the imaginations of Radiohead fans—who are famous for being real superfans. To be honest, it’s made me even more nervous about doing it. I just wanted to do it right, so I did a hell of a lot of research about what the track means. That has its place in the video’s narrative.