In 2014, filmmaker and avid Phish fan Nick Setteducato created a short stop-motion video entitled Flight of the Mockingbird, which followed the titular bird on a journey set to Phish that ended in a Mt. Rushmore of the Vermont Quartet. Now Setteducato has returned to present a sequel of sorts to that video, his 2016: A Space Oddity, which he has been working on since he released the first video over two years ago. 

2016: A Space Oddity tells the story of a (Fish)man going into space to save the world from a world-ending asteroid impact and finding out that the mission is more than he bargained for. Of course, the whole thing is set to Phish tunes and contains an array of references to the band, including having stop-motion puppets of all four members play their various parts in the story, plus various nods to Star Wars and the video’s namesakes, David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Watch for yourself:

Setteducato, a former guitarist, now works in New Zealand for director Peter Jackson. In an interview with JamBase, the filmmaker discussed the references in the video a bit, saying, “I was very encouraged by the positive response to that first video, so I thought I’d try something a little more ambitious for the next one. I settled on this idea of an absurd, surreal, space adventure inspired by episodes of the great ’60s British TV series Thunderbirds, and set to a short, upbeat instrumental track. The ideas just flowed from there. Maybe another Phish song? Maybe a killer asteroid or a wormhole, and a ‘Big Black Furry Creature From Mars’? Maybe Fishman is the pilot, and maybe he ends up in a giant bowl of cereal? You know, the usual stuff…Also, my dog Otis Redding makes a cameo as the alien.”

Setteducato’s company is called Lucy’s Place Productions, and he encourages those that enjoy his work to donate to Phish’s Mockingbird Foundation.