Dangling prize money of $5,000 and a worldwide VEVO premiere as incentives, Keane partnered with online creative community Genero to solicit entries for the band’s official music video to Strangeland track, “Black Rain.” After combing through the submissions and narrowing down the list to ten finalists, Keane declared UK director/filmmaker Andy Marsh the contest’s winner.

Describing his treatment as “a child’s wartime dream,” Marsh’s music video complements the meditative song’s inspiration. Keane’s principal songwriter, Tim Rice-Oxley, wrote “Black Rain” after viewing Ari Folman’s 2008 animated documentary, Waltz With Bashir, in which the former Israeli soldier revisits his experiences in the 1982 Lebanon War.

“We loved Andy Marsh’s video for ‘Black Rain,’ says Rice-Oxley. “There’s a heartbreaking sense of a young boy’s dreams gone awry, a yearning for innocent times and high hopes, of love and kindness remembered in the face of violence and fear. Of course, I can’t say whether that’s what was intended at all! But either way, the atmosphere of this story fits beautifully with the sense of the song, and even the sense of Strangeland as a record. The ghostly and surreal mood of the video also works perfectly with the feel of the music itself — sound and visuals complement each other and give each other more power, which is the ultimate achievement for a music video.”

Purchase Keane – “Black Rain” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.