The French world music group Deep Forest hopes to benefit from a little blue-ribbon help for the video for "Noonday Sun," and have enlisted Oscar-nominated documentarian Michele Ohayon to direct the clip.

Ohayon, who received an Academy Award nomination last year for "Colors Straight Up," shot the video for "Sun" this past weekend with Deep Forest on location in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

The director described the video, which depicts an African woman walking through the desert as a school girl tries to follow in her footsteps, as "about the past meeting the present and the future."

Deep Forest plans to play a string of concerts in July and August, which would comprise its first stateside tour in almost three years, and are discussing the feasibility of taking a full orchestra out on the road with them.

The dates announced for Deep Forest's upcoming tour are:

• 7/23 - Los Angeles, C @ Wiltern Theater
• 7/24 - San Francisco, CA @ Greek Theater
• 7/26 - Seattle, WA @ Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery
• 7/28 - Portland, OR Ariene Schnitzer Concert Hall
• 7/31 - Chicago, IL @ The Vic
• 8/1 - Ann Arbor, MI @ Michigan Theater
• 8/3 - Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
• 8/4 - New York, NY @ Hammerstein Ballroom
• 8/5 - Boston, MA @ Avalon Ballroom

• Deep Forest