Toronto indie rock band The Lightning Struck return with Century Storm, their boldest and most focused record to date. Drawing from gnostic philosophy, science fiction, and a distinctly vintage sonic palette, the band paints a picture of modern life’s turbulence through a deeply personal lens.

On Century Storm, the band recorded 17 songs, carefully curating the final album to represent the most cohesive, uncompromising version of their vision. Grounded in raw instrumentation, sharp songwriting, and existential reflections, Century Storm is a portrait of a band with a defined identity and a wide sonic reach.

The focus track, “In Her Dreams Tonight,” captures the album’s surreal but grounded ethos while channeling homesickness, alienation, and unexpected optimism through a surf-tinged indie rock lens.

Written from the perspective of an alien longing to return home but trapped in a human body fated to die first, “In Her Dreams Tonight” draws direct inspiration from Fritz Leiber’s sci-fi short story The Ship Sails at Midnight. The result is a track that feels eerily joyful: upbeat melodies and retro rock touches like surf guitar riffs and Duane Eddy-style leads mask the melancholy at its core.

1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically?
The song was inspired by a Fritz Leiber short story, The Ships Sails at Midnight, about an alien being who is trapped on Earth in a human body. The story is told from the perspective of a human friend of this alien being, as well as from the perspective of the alien talking to herself. It explores themes about how she seems to not fit into the society around her, and how she will have to abandon her body in order to be free.

2.What was the inspiration behind this video (visuals, storyline, etc.)?

The video was conceived to bring together visual elements that reinforced the story and the underlying feelings of longing and alienation.  We combined elements of modern dance, shadow puppets and performance video.  The idea was that the protagonist could be anyone among us, and we anonymized her by never showing her face.  You’ll either see her as a shadow puppet, a masked dancer, or shot from behind as she walks through her environment.

3.What was the process of making this video?

Damra Camat was our dancer and choreographer.  Her brief was to “dance alien”, which she captured amazingly.  All of those moves were her invention.  Although she found the paper mask unpleasant to dance in, it really reinforced the anonymity of the protagonist.  (And we had an amusing social media post where she rips off the mask and jumps up and down on it, crushing it.)  The shadow puppets were created by Linda Troxel, and were shot behind translucent paper.  They allowed us to portray the more difficult parts of the story (like spaceships landing), as well as providing a symbolic language (like the closing of the heart) to work against the live action footage.