Here’s the official word from the band’s frontman and director of the video, Jared Mann:

This video is centered around the idea of a dream machine. Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to record my own dreams and watch them back. I always imagined them being kind of fuzzy and imperfect though. This set the stage for some kind of video based dream machine. We also spend a lot of time in our own studio as a band, engineering and recording, so it was fun to blend both ideas together. With help from Kia Davis on set design and Kelly Riley behind the camera, we were able to create this small dark analog gear world I was thinking of.

In this case, the protagonist is held against his will, about have his dreams and memories erased, but he’s able to awaken himself and overpower the machine through one important memory.

The craziest part might have been rigging the actually dream machine. I edited 15 videos that were all cut to line up timing wise with each other, then dubbed them from digital to mini dv tape, and had to hit play all at the same time to get the right effect in playback. We barley pulled it off! But it was a lot of fun.