Rock ‘n’ roll saviors Arcade Fire and “Jesus Walks” video auteur Chris Milk have seen the future of online video, and it requires your home address.

The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive, Web-based music video collaboration between the director–he’s also worked on video projects for Barack Obama, U2, and Nike among others–Google, and the indie-rock darlings. Their latest, urbanist tinged album, The Suburbs, is a love letter to our idealized childhood abodes that often literally or figuratively crumble as we age. See for yourself with this interactive experiment: It uses Google Street View maps to quasi-personalize the video, which features a hooded man running through deserted lanes.

The Google Chrome blog helps explain some of the elements at work:

It features a mash-up of Google Maps and Google Street View with HTML5

canvas, HTML5 audio and video, an interactive drawing tool, and

choreographed windows that dance around the screen. These modern web

technologies have helped us craft an experience that is personalized

and unique for each viewer, as you virtually run through the streets

where you grew up.

And at around 90 seconds in, you’ll probably be a little moved when

asked to draw a little picture and write a postcard in a witchy font

offering advice to your younger selves. (My postcard is strictly between me and

young me, but let’s just say if young me gets old me’s message, he’ll

think twice about dying his hair black and getting really into death metal.)

For Google, this was a showcase for how well interactive, personalized, multi-window mini-movies can work if written for its HTML5-enabled browser, Chrome. Unlike previous HTML5 demos that leave the average person stumped about the invisible magic happening behind the screen, viewers of The Wilderness Downtown don’t have to be code monkeys to get how bananas this all is as it unravels on screen. It also proves how well HTML5 can compete with Flash–it would be extremely difficult for a Flash developer to interweave publicly available databases with synchronized, multiple-window actions the way this does. Windows open, move, interact, and close, all timed to the downbeats in Arcade Fire’s song “We Used to Wait.” The developers who worked with Milk deserve credit for pulling it off.

Some hints on getting the most out of the experience: