If you thought Sonic Youth’s song “Do You Believe In Rapture?” was a haunting tune, just wait till you see what Midnight Masses have done with it. Featured on their latest Rapture Ready, I Gazed At The Body EP, the song easily out-sorrows the source. To begin with, Autry Fulbright’s vocals are decidedly more forlorn than Thurston Moore’s on the original. The addition of melancholy reverb, haunting ‘ooh’s and some rather ironic, dejected whistling create a beautiful, if not doleful, track.

Then there’s the video, which takes the downtrodden nature of the song to a whole other level. It features the band members offing themselves one by one in pantomimed suicide, including hanging from an invisible noose, popping non-existent pills, and Fulbright blowing his brains out with a finger-gun. Gruesome, to be sure, it’s still worth its weight in artistic gold. Pay attention to Miyuki Furtado’s neck as she hangs in midair – that’s attention to detail, right there. We will warn you, though; this may not be SFW, nor for those made queasy by visualizations of self-violence. Watch for yourself at Cluster 1.

On a related side-note, Fulbright recently became a full-fledged member of the psych rock outfit . . . And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. This means he’ll be joining his fellow Midnight Masses founder Jason Reece as a member of both bands. Though MM currently have no scheduled tour dates, you can catch Reece and Fulbright on the road when Trail of Dead tours with Surfer Blood beginning in April, or when they hit SXSW later this month.