There are music videos, and then there are music videos. Gotye‘s visual treatment for his song “Easy Way Out” is definitely the latter considering it took nine months to finish. The video for the lead single from his new album, Making Mirrors, was shot in Australia by director Darcy Prendergast and the crew at Oh Yeah Wow.

“We completely disregarded ‘good business sense’ and created a piece of art that would hopefully leave the viewer’s cerebral cortex sliding down the computer screen,” says Prendergast. “From a visual perspective, we wanted to bombard our audience with magic. I’m a huge believer of in-camera trickery and have always been an avid fan of stop motion, but those skills fused with those of our resident VFX wizard, Andrew Goldsmith, enabled us to create some pretty astonishing but deliberately understated animation.”

And yes, the set – which was a five-room house built from scratch – took up Oh Yeah Wow’s studio for almost nine months. The result is absolutely incredible.