Watch Radiohead's stripped down The Numbers video

A still from Radiohead's video for The Numbers
A still from Radiohead's video for The Numbers

Radiohead have shared a stripped down performance of their track The Numbers.

It’s lifted from their latest album, A Moon Shaped Pool. The promo features Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood playing alongside a Roland CR-78 drum machine on a bench in Tarzana, California.

It was directed by filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, who was at the helm of their previous videos for Daydreaming and Present Tense. He’s also worked with Greenwood on a number of film scores.

Greenwood recently described Radiohead as “arrangers” in the studio sessions for their latest album.

He said: “Thom will write half a song and we’ll develop it, then the big pressure is, ‘How do you put this song across and not ruin it?’

“Part of the problem is, Thom will sit at the piano and play a song like Pyramid Song and we’re going to record it. How do we not make it worse? How do we make it better than him just playing it by himself, which is already usually quite great.

“But there’s no individual interest in what we play on the record, it’s about servicing the song. It’s not really about, ‘Can I do my guitar part now? We’re arrangers, really.’”

Greenwood also previously said the band tried to use “very old and very new technology” on the latest record to fuel their creativity.

Radiohead will perform at Austin’s City Limits Music Festival in Texas tomorrow (October 7).

The 10 best Radiohead songs that aren't Creep

Former TeamRock news desk member Christina joined our team in late 2015, and although her time working on online rock news was fairly brief, she made a huge impact by contributing close to 1500 stories. Christina also interviewed artists including Deftones frontman Chino Moreno and worked at the Download festival. In late 2016, Christina left rock journalism to pursue a career in current affairs. In 2021, she was named Local Weekly Feature Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards.