From the man who directed the intriguing narrative of Radiohead's Just and the proleptic events of Coldplay's The Scientist comes another story with strange significance – a night in the life of Róisín Murphy, one-time Moloko singer and now solo artist.

Jamie Thraves' promo for Murphy's infectious single Overpowered begins with Murphy completing a live performance while wearing an outlandish black and white chequered dress in a theatre, returning matter-of-factly to her (empty) dressing room and then, without changing her outfit, hitting the streets of London.

But there's no glamour involved here – quite the opposite. She has the mundane journey of a regular citizen, taking the night bus, buying a late-night kebab, witnessing a street fight, before arriving at her suburban home and loading the washing machine – all the while sporting the bizarre frock and angular hat. She's still wearing her stage outfit when she goes to bed.

The promo marks a departure for Thraves, as it is the first time he has directed an idea originally devised by someone else. The treatment was written by fine artist Scott King, who went to the same art college in Hull as Thraves and is a fan of his work.

King's idea stemmed from his artwork for the single, which features Murphy clad in a bizarre costume composed of scaffolding. This costume would have restricted Murphy's movement in the promo, so the singer selected a new dress by London fashion designer Gareth Pugh.

For his part, Thraves wanted to make the promo as cinematic as possible to bring out the contrast between the outlandish and the mundane, so took the film Taxi Driver as a starting point. "It's very real, but a hyper-real thing," he says. "We did discuss slow motion but I decided that it didn't feel right. The costume was so surreal I didn't feel I wanted to add more surreal qualities to it."

The director adds that Murphy is a big fan of Shane Meadows, so the concept of realism clicked with her immediately. But, as she is also a performer who has always exhibited an artistic and sometimes outrageous sensibility, she valued the contradiction at the heart of the video.

"How she operates onstage is in direct contrast to how grounded she is," he notes. "She's hard-drinking and quite a loud and funny woman, and this persona she has onstage is of being quite diva-like. It seemed to be the perfect way to showcase her."

The performance was shot at The Coronet in London's Elephant & Castle. Thraves hired a company that specialise in providing crowds and studied live footage so he could re-create an authentic gig atmosphere. Then the crew also took to Watford's perilous streets after dark for the street scenes, which proved to be quite an eye-opener.

"It was absolute mayhem, it was brilliant," says Thraves. "Everyone was very anxious about filming there, and the police were saying it was a bit dodgy and might kick off. We got two or three guys who were quite pissed to be part of a running group. They were brilliant initially, but by the end they were knackered."

Shot mostly on 35mm (16mm were used for the onstage shots) Thraves captures the not-untypical weekend wildness of an urban centre in modern Britain very astutely. And, although the label were keen on Murphy doing a sync performance of the song, Thraves not surprisingly resisted, instead adding peripheral sounds, including breathing and a rustling paper bag. He explains these final touches added to the real vs. hyper real effect.

"I think because it is Róisín is quite interesting," he says. "The opportunity to have sound effects seemed like the right way to go. It raised the video away from the world – it was meant to be quite an 'anti-video'."

All in all, it is a successful outcome for someone who was actually quite sceptical initially about directing another person's concept. Ultimately, as he explains, he was completely won over. "I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, and it was really liberating for me. I felt a sense of freedom."