Sam Bailey returns to music videos with this joyful love letter to the Golden Age of film musicals, in his new promo for Metronomy. 

The band are seen adorned in giant flower headpieces, playing their song Love Factory, while being led by a conductor, and as a vivacious dancer, Majella Fitzgerald, takes centre stage. Majella is the busy Bee, who picks out each Metronomy 'flower', one by one, to 'pollinate' them. And this happens in a splendidly suggestive representation of Nature - choreographed by Supple Nam. 

From there, the concept launches into full, Golden Age musical mode, as the Bee interacts with each flower, around the stately house that provides the venue of the video, viewing each member through her trippy, multi-imaged 'bee vision.' 

It's an extremely skilled display of lightly frothy entertainment, that is also clever and subtly alternative in its joie de vivre. In other words, it's very Metronomy.

The initial idea came from watching bees hopping from bud to bud on a rosemary bush.

"From start to finish this music video was huge lumps of fun to make," says Sam Bailey. "The initial idea came from watching bees hopping from bud to bud on a rosemary bush in my garden, indiscriminately having sweet little intimate interactions before moving onto the next one.

"The flowers became happy little dance partners to the bee as it moved around from station to station, as if on a factory floor. It married up perfectly with Joe's lyrics and the uplifting feel of the track's hazy tone. I was thrilled that the band went for it.

"Knowing that they often get really involved in the performance side I thought we should challenge them to learn some sweet moves from choreographer Supple Nam, who has a great history of bringing theatricality and levity to his dances. Just look at his work on the Miike Snow promo [for Genghis Khan] by Ninian Doff.

"Our performers, Majella Fitzgerald and Andrew Lyle-Pinnock [the conductor] come from big tap backgrounds. So we had a lot of fun playing with moves from musicals of 50s Hollywood (White Christmas, Singin’ In The Rain, Let’s Dance...) God, it’s joyful watching dancers move around, exploring ideas, paying homage to Vera Ellen and co. Especially when they’ve got big ol’ Hollywood smiles on. The genre calls for constant smiling, but if I could dance as effortlessly as them (and without wheezing) I’d be smiling too.

We had a ball trying to emulate this era of filmmaking... hard lighting, bright colours and really bumpy camera movements.

"All of us behind the camera had a ball trying to emulate this era of filmmaking too. DoP David Wright had all the good ideas on how to capture this. Hard lighting, bright colours and really bumpy camera movements. Apologies to our grip Anthony - I made him loosen up all the tracks every time he’d painstakingly smoothed everything out. I think it looks good though - if you watch some of the tracking shots in Singin’ In The Rain they feel like the camera is being driven round on an ASDA trolley. 

"The band were unexhaustible. 48 hours before shooting this they had spent a day flying in harnesses for the excellent Right On Time promo by Juliet Casella and Thibaut Ceasar. So they must be awarded with some sort of endurance award. Especially since they aren’t smokers and I had them vaping (nothing toxic) for the pollination shot plates. 

"I have nothing but thanks to them for trusting the idea and getting stuck in. Same goes for the rest of the team who worked very hard to get this all going six floors up in a central London building with an unapologetically small lift."