The Weeknd's new album, Beauty Behind the Madness, is all about the seedy underbelly of the pop world, and its intensity comes from its refusal to let you come up for air. That experience is mimicked in Abel Tesfaye's new video for "The Hills," a dark, apocalyptic 360-degree visual that transports viewers down to the city streets, at eye level with Tesfaye.
The video, which features added verses from Eminem, follows The Weeknd as he emerges from a venue and looks around him. A car is on fire; green comets shoot through the sky. Viewers using Chrome or the YouTube app can look around as well, or strap on a VR headset like Google Cardboard to enhance the feeling of the futility of escape. Tesfaye isn't the first musician to make a VR music video. Björk, Squarepusher, and Foals have all released similar experiences in the past year.
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