Steve Aoki is a collaboration machine. He regularly racks up a dozen or more superstar team-ups per year, often fusing genres and language boundaries. This year, for example, he paired with Monsta X for the house-influenced "Play It Cool" and recruited Darren Criss for a lite-EDM take on Dave Matthews Band's "Crash Into You."

This month, he kept on rolling with "Let It Be Me," an acoustic-led pop number alongside Backstreet Boys. It arrived just a few days before with a new video that dropped on Monday (September 9) and features open-hearted confessionals from real people sharing their stories about the challenges of love.

"This is a special one for all of us," the BSB team wrote in an Instagram caption. "It's about working through any challenges that life brings to be with the person you love." As such, the stars of the clip are not even the dapper, besuited five Boys themselves, nor the equally spiffy Aoki, but the everyday storytellers who spin their tales of love in black-and-white portraiture.

"We've all overcome challenges when loving someone, but love always wins in the end," Aoki tweeted to promote the clip. And by the end, there's a nice and subtle Wizard of Oz moment where love indeed wins — and you can tell by how saturated the video's color becomes.

Watch the stark, emotional video for "Let It Be Me," which premiered today on MTV channels, above.