Foals - Spanish Sahara

What this video is

Released in March–April 2010 as the lead track from Foals' second album Total Life Forever, 'Spanish Sahara' arrived at a moment of significant artistic maturation for UK indie rock. The video's stark Scottish landscape, ritualistic animal imagery, and absence of conventional performance or narrative tropes placed it firmly within a strand of post-millennial British music video-making that prioritized conceptual…

Why it matters

A landmark entry in UK post-rock and art-indie music video history, 'Spanish Sahara' represents the genre's capacity for austere, ritualistic visual storytelling. Its rejection of performance convention in favor of elemental imagery — fire, death, landscape, solitary human endurance — prefigured a…

The director

Dave Ma is a photographer and director who established himself after relocating to London. He has shot portraits of artists including Nick Cave, TV On The Radio, and Sonic Youth, and has collaborated extensively with Foals across press campaigns and multiple…