diff --git a/.changes/unreleased/Under the Hood-20230725-102609.yaml b/.changes/unreleased/Under the Hood-20230725-102609.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..f4cf4aec5cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.changes/unreleased/Under the Hood-20230725-102609.yaml	
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+kind: Under the Hood
+body: Ref expressions with version can now be processed by the latest version of the
+  high-performance dbt-extractor library.
+time: 2023-07-25T10:26:09.902878-04:00
+custom:
+  Author: peterallenwebb
+  Issue: "7688"
diff --git a/core/dbt/parser/models.py b/core/dbt/parser/models.py
index 772ed5f0640..4fe6cd56082 100644
--- a/core/dbt/parser/models.py
+++ b/core/dbt/parser/models.py
@@ -497,12 +497,10 @@ def populate(self, node: ModelNode, config: ContextConfig, statically_parsed: Di
         # set refs and sources on the node object
         refs: List[RefArgs] = []
         for ref in statically_parsed["refs"]:
-            if len(ref) == 1:
-                package, name = None, ref[0]
-            else:
-                package, name = ref
-
-            refs.append(RefArgs(package=package, name=name))
+            name = ref.get("name")
+            package = ref.get("package")
+            version = ref.get("version")
+            refs.append(RefArgs(name, package, version))
 
         node.refs += refs
         node.sources += statically_parsed["sources"]
diff --git a/core/setup.py b/core/setup.py
index e99a1ba715b..c43cc6997fd 100644
--- a/core/setup.py
+++ b/core/setup.py
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@
         "sqlparse>=0.2.3",
         # ----
         # These are major-version-0 packages also maintained by dbt-labs. Accept patches.
-        "dbt-extractor~=0.4.1",
+        "dbt-extractor~=0.5.0",
         "hologram~=0.0.16",  # includes transitive dependencies on python-dateutil and jsonschema
         "minimal-snowplow-tracker~=0.0.2",
         # DSI is under active development, so we're pinning to specific dev versions for now.