The music video for the song is directed by Mark Romanek. It features Beck walking through various New York City locations, wearing cowboy attire and carrying a boombox. At some points, the action freezes and the camera zooms in on Beck in tableau. Later the camera zooms in on spies that have been following Beck the whole time.

The video has references to the films Midnight Cowboy and The 400 Blows.

At the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, Beck won a total of five awards. Three were for "The New Pollution" and "Devils Haircut" won two: Best Editing and Best Male Video.

As is common with his Odelay-era songs, "Devils Haircut" is driven by a number of samples: the drums in the choruses and drum breaks come from Pretty Purdie's "Soul Drums"; the drumbeat during the verses comes from Them's cover of James Brown's "Out of Sight"; and the guitar riff was taken from another Them cover, of "I Can Only Give You Everything", replayed by Beck rather than sampled. Sampled elsewhere, most notably during the bridge, is "Climax One", a track from Mort Garson's erotic album "Music For Sensuous Lovers", released under the pseudonym "Z".

On top of this mix of instrumental borrowings, Beck sings about "stealing kisses from the leprous faces", "discount orgies", and "garbage man trees". The song's lyrics are full of poetry and mental shortcuts. The lyrics here emulate minimalistic phrases as may be used when not communicating outside of the inner mind. As such, the words are representative of a metaphorical concept of something observed in the world.

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Wikipedia