Hem – “Tourniquet”

While Hem’s “Tourniquet” is born of the troublesome past they had as a band — “Everything about who we were, where we lived, and how we related to each other seemed beyond repair,” band pianist-songwriter Dan Messe told NPR — its video is one of the most delightful things to come across our screens in 2013 so far. The animated cityscapes inhabited by anthropomorphic townspeople are meant to symbolize functioning in society while maintaining your own primal desires and need to survive. And with its bright colors and whimsical paper cutouts, it’s hard to fall victim to the track’s somber tone.