The most unsettling horror is so often the simplest. The shadow of an unwelcome visitor cast on a wall, a menacing figure passing in the background of a bucolic scene, an unexpected mask flashed at the right moment.

For its latest video, “Good Friend,” Ravenna Woods takes its own simple approach—a subtly shifting and uncanny projection—and the results are effectively eerie.

Horror is a short step for the Seattle five-piece, which within its rumbling and frenetic pop songs has long entertained humanity’s darker side, with Chris Cunningham’s Costello-esque croon leading the way. Lately the band has unveiled a video aesthetic to match, first with the moving, impressionistic, nocturnal video for “Animals,” premiered at this year’s Sync Music Video Festival (set for a re-release later this fall), and earlier this summer in the anxiety-ridden scenes that accompany the band’s propulsive, synth-forward single “Alleyways.” Both these songs will join “Good Friend” on the band’s upcoming EP, Alleyways & Animals, due out October 14.

Like “Alleyways,” the new video splices shots of the band playing in a color-washed shadowy basement and a nightmare scene, but “Good Friend,” directed by Cunningham with help from his bandmates, is a moodier affair, with wide-open spaces between the band’s trademark drums to take in Cunningham’s fatalism while that face burns its visage into your very soul.

Ravenna Woods will be performing on Saturday, October 1 as part of the Seattle Kokon Taiko 35th Anniversary Concert at Shorewood Performing Arts Center. On October 21, the band will play The Sunset Tavern to celebrate the release of Alleyways & Animals.

mbaumgarten@seattleweekly.com