Check out the intimate music video for Deer Tick’s “The Rock,” off their upcoming album Negativity.

The video, a point-blank camera shot of lead singer John McCauley’s shifty mug, resonates well as part of a deeply personal album to which the band ascribed the tongue-in-cheek descriptor “a big, dark cloud hanging over us.” Between the trials of working with bandmate/producer Steve Berlin, who pushed the band towards a style more in alignment with their output prior to Divine Providence, and the tribulations of McCauley’s personal life—the breakup with his fiancée and his parents’ divorce, among others—the new record became a particularly emotional challenge for the alt-country band from Rhode Island. So take another look. There’s a lot behind those eyes.