Synopsis

The music video begins with an elderly man sitting alone in his trailer home, reflecting on his past when he notices a letter on his doormat. The memories take form in animation, featuring the man in his youth, depicted as an animated Brandon Flowers, in the company of his band (animated versions of Keuning, Stoermer, and Vannucci). He is watching a young girl's (Izabella Miko) dance recital from his garage when she notices him observing her, before they are interrupted by her teacher who draws the curtains. However, he later seeks her out at her home, and it is presumed that they fall in love with each other.

One night, the young woman has finished a performance but grows tired of her teacher and runs off from the stage to seek out Flowers. He is happy to see her when she finds him; and, he takes her through a motorbike ride through the desert. However, the paranoid jealousy that Flowers bears begins to surface as he catches sight of a faceless stranger in the desert, which is likely to be a figment of his imagination. Later, when the woman is shown to have won the Miss Atomic Bomb pageant alongside her dance partner (Eric Roberts), a surly Flowers who is performing at the pageant with his band, becomes more resentful and believes that the man is in love with his girlfriend. Akin to the events in "Mr Brightside", the imaginary stranger in the desert forms its identity as the dance partner and Flowers makes his way towards the young woman's house in a troubled state. He arrives there on New Year's Eve in Las Vegas to propose to her, but he catches sight of the car that her dance partner owns and becomes certain that she is having an affair with him. He leaves the engagement ring on the ground and walks away. As he walks through Las Vegas, he has hallucinations of women who are kissing other men as his girlfriend kissing her dance partner. Flowers then ages visibly and heads for his trailer home in the desert as he is plagued by visions of the young woman's fate after he abandoned her on that night all those years ago.

The video then transitions to real-life acting, showing the elderly man in the present opening a letter from his then-girlfriend. Glimpses of the writing reveal that she was uncertain about what had happened the night that he had walked away from her on New Year's Eve. The memories then repeat in live acting, with the young woman tearfully holding up the engagement ring that he had left behind and recalling the night that she had found him in the desert. The young woman is shown to be dancing alone in her apartment, although Flowers imagines her partner kissing her behind the curtains. It is revealed that all the events which occurred from Flowers' point of view were fictional and that it was indeed his paranoid jealousy which overcame him. As the New Year's countdown ends, the young woman rushes out onto her balcony in excitement, only to see Flowers standing in the street glaring up at her and then walking away bitterly, leaving her in confusion. The last shots of the music video show the letter on the doormat disappearing and the elderly man sitting alone in his trailer home, reflecting on his past as a photo of the young woman on his shelf slowly begins to fade from view.