Franz Ferdinand - This Fire (Video)

What this video is

Released in October 2004 as a re-recorded single during the peak of the post-punk revival, 'This Fffire' arrived as Franz Ferdinand's debut album was winning the Mercury Music Prize and achieving over 3.6 million worldwide sales. The video's Constructivist-influenced graphic design and theatrical world-domination concept situates it squarely within the art-school rock tradition — a lineage of UK bands (Gang of…

Why it matters

A defining artifact of the mid-2000s UK indie rock video canon, 'This Fire' demonstrates how post-punk revival bands deployed art-historical visual literacy as a marker of cultural distinction. StyleWar's direction integrates graphic design and live action in a way that directly anticipates the…

The director

StyleWar is a Swedish directing collective co-founded by Oskar Holmedal and Martin Sjöström in 1998, originating as a boutique graphic design and animation studio before transitioning into music videos and commercials. They broke internationally with their…