Kevin Bronson on January 18th, 2013

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There’s a lot of heavy-duty stuff going on in Carlos Lopez Estrada’s video for “Waking World” by the sun-soaked rockers El Sportivo & the Blooz. The director trails Isaac Ravishankara (a fellow filmmaker) through the wilderness near Morelos, Mexico, to create one of those waking-dream vignettes that is at once beautiful and horrifying. “I see it as an allegory about how beautiful things can sometimes come from dark places,” the director says, and the band’s mastermind, Darren Hollowell agrees: “The wandering and wounded hero is an apt metaphor for the lyrics.” El Sportivo’s debut full-length, “Nights and Weekends,” comes out Feb. 26 on the White Iris label that Hollowell co-owns. The album was produced by Lewis Pesacov (Fool’s Gold, Foreign Born). “Waking World,” featuring backing vocals from Nashville’s Nikki Lane, makes for quite a four-minute journey.