Ben Howard returns with the first release from his fourth album and a satirical take on the mores of the English landed classes in a widescreen comedy with bite directed by Cloé Bailly.

For What A Day Bailly plants the viewer firmly in the English countryside, with a hunting party of shotgun-toting gentry. These increasingly drunken upper class twits are prospective Elmer Fudds, on the hunt for rabbits - which are being protected elsewhere in the field by Ben Howard himself.

The fun really starts when one of the party begins to turn into one of the very creatures that he and his pals intend to fill with buckshot. Mysteriously sprouting a bunny tail, prominent teeth and floppy ears becomes increasingly difficult to hide from his boozed-up pals - leading to a shootout worthy of a decent Spaghetti Western.

Ben wanted to create a social satire about the vacuity of British nobility hunting parties.

“When Ben told me he wanted a dark comedy music vid for What A Day, I was just psyched," says Cloé Bailly. "It's my favourite genre to explore. He wanted to create a social satire about the vacuity of British nobility hunting parties. In his own words, it was a nonsense idea loosely based upon the Old English rhyme, ‘back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other’.

"People loving to hunt just for the sake of killing, not out of necessity, might as well end up shooting each other and loving it too... But what if on top of this nature took revenge? What if the predator turned into the prey so in this case a hunter turned into a rabbit?!

Cloé is a queen of dark comedy - I’m so grateful we got to work together on it.

The video was actually shot in Bulgaria - in countryside that could pass for the rolling hills of the home counties. 

"Shooting in the Bulgarian mountains was intense but Ben, the crew and I were like kids," comments Bailly. "It's exhilarating to play with human emotions in a huis-clos, to imagine what people are truly capable of. And it’s always so good to see a whole crew getting on board with such a nonsense concept based on animal hysteria and group homicide. And of course, it goes without saying that having a dozen adorable bunnies around makes any shoot sweeter...”

Ben Howard has added that “Cloé somehow transformed a basic countryside shoot ‘em up into an amazing tale of delightful retribution. Cloé is a queen of dark comedy and I’m so grateful that as friends we got to work together on it. The eclectic Bulgarian cast and crew somehow managed to pull this off in strange times, made all the more entertaining in a completely foreign language.”