The video opens with bleak images of a communist cityscape, drenched in a dull gray. Statues of dead Kim family leaders tower over a young boy with a red socialist youth neckerchief as he walks with his parents. It looks like a state TV news report, or perhaps documentary footage from Pyongyang.

Then the power chords kick in.

In the music video for “Tsoi is Dead,” the Russian rock band ModeM plunges viewers into a surreal version of the DPRK capital, telling the story of a young boy who becomes obsessed with Soviet rock star Victor Tsoi and