Dierks Bentley is known to go the extra mile to make sure he’s made a great video for his songs. For the song, “Black,” he went to Iceland, he also got “Drunk on a Plane.” He’s shot videos late at night and early in the morning, but his “Burning Man” video may take the cake with comfort taking a back seat to the visual element. He and his pals TJ and John Osborne, otherwise known as Brothers Osborne, went out in the hot, hot, hot desert to catch some iconic footage for the clip, which is nominated for two CMT Music Awards during tonight’s show.

“‘The ‘Burning Man’ video shoot was, it was difficult. Sometimes you have to sacrifice comfort for, obviously, the view, for the way it turns out, for the area you’re shooting the video in and trying to get these great shots, and your comfort is secondary, which I’m totally fine with because I just want a great video that supports a great song. I’m always nervous making videos, because if I’m putting a song out there as a single, I feel like it’s a very special song, and I don’t want the video possibly make the song not be as good as it is, you know what I mean,” says Dierks. “In this case, it meant shooting at a body of water out by Palm Springs that’s totally dead. It’s called the Salton Sea, and it used to be a place where Frank Sinatra would be water skiing. It was this beautiful place. I don’t know what happened, but the water…the whole thing is completely dead. There’s no fish living in there. It smells terrible. It’s super hot. There’s rattlesnakes under every single rock. We lost about four or five people from heat stroke; TJ’s boots were like melting into the rocks. [laughs] It was unbelievable. I felt so bad for those guys, because when you do a duet with somebody, you’re kind of signing on to do more than just singing on a track. You’re gonna be there for awards shows, for videos, but they were great as they always are. I love those guys. It turned out great. It looks awesome on TV, which is the whole point. It was an interesting place to do a video, but we were nominated for a CMT [Award], so it all turned out well.”

Dierks is currently making his way up the country charts with his latest hit, “Living.”