Unknown Mortal Orchestra – “From The Sun” Video

“From The Sun,” the kick-off cut from Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s sophomore album II is, like its namesake, bright and warm and feels like it belongs in the opening credits of a movie when the day is just beginning. UMO could have made a video that fit its sonic pleasantries but instead went for a subtle dichotomy with the visuals. With the direction of Rick Alverson (The Comedy), the main character in the clip is abused and humiliated by art students, all while this lovely song soundtracks.

Mozart’s Sister – “Mozart’s Sister” Video

Montreal’s Caila Thompson-Hannant is Mozart’s Sister. Mozart’s Sister’s lead single’s title? “Mozart’s Sister”! It’s a cheery-sounding burst of ’80s pop (her bio name-checks Cyndi and Kylie) meshed with ’50s girl-group callback flair, and some very contemporary electronic production filigree (her bio also name-checks scenemates tUnE-yArDs and Grimes) — a catchy, feel-good thing, for the point in the party when the girls get drunk enough to make a dancing circle and sing to each other. But back to that project/title name, though: As a listener, when you encounter a project/title track, you have to consider the possibility that you are listening to that artist’s spiritual mission statement, and “Mozart’s Sister” appears to be just that — lyrics about always being #2 (“feeling like Mozart’s sister,” which was a pretty bum ticket in the genetic lottery), and a video casting Caila as the ho-hum, quirky also-ran to her backing singers’ appearance as more “conventionally attractive” ciphers. Forgive my doing it, but a Google search of “Mozart’s Sister Lena Dunham” turned up only this blog post reviewing the films Mozart’s Sister and Tiny Furniture. That’s likely to change, though, because this track and clip do their job well — Caila seems smart, self-aware, and willing to play with vanity and identity via appealing art, and “Mozart’s Sister” is an earworm, and the video features lots of outfits.

The Lonely Island – “Go Kindergarten” (Feat. Robyn)

The Lonely Island and Robyn’s “Go Kindergarten” is probably the group’s most non-sequitur-laden track in their catalogue, although commands like “make your butt look flat,” among other body part-instructions are nothing out of the ordinary for the trio. This video is not their usual Digital Short-caliber fare, but instead grainy footage of people dancing with paper bags on their heads. It also takes a stab at the weirdly hashtag-heavy clip for Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” While I think we do need to continue taking people to task for this odd promo-behavior, I can’t help but feel like the guys could have taken a tip from that video and also featured T.I. brushing a girl’s hair. It just makes everything a little bit better.

Cold Cave – “Black Boots” Video

Cold Cave go full acid trip collage in their video for “Black Boots.” The clip was directed by Slava Tsukerman, who is known for his 1980s cult film Liquid Sky, a film recognized for heavily influencing the electroclash scene in the early 2000s. The plot of Liquid Sky revolves around a New Wave nightclub, so Tsukerman is the great candidate for orchestrating the visuals for this smooth, goth-inflected cut. He worked collaboratively with clothing designer Alexandre Plokhov, whose stern attire graces Wes Eisold throughout the video.

Simian Mobile Disco & Bicep – “Sacrifice” Video

Simian Mobile Disco and fellow electronic duo Bicep link up for the house-imbued “Sacrifice.” The video is equally as soothing as the cut, a rolling clip of greyscale animation, almost like a slideshow of deconstructed DNA helixes that move with the beat.

Sonny & The Sunsets – “palmreader” Video

Sonny & The Sunsets’ space-and-death concept album Antenna To The Afterworld is out early next month, and in anticipation, they’ve released a video for track “palmreader.” The clip features the band on a trip to the movies to watch a bizarre black-and-white film that goes from whimsical musician pissing contest to something that takes a tip from Blue Velvet and Van Gogh. Not for the extremely squeamish.

Major Lazer – “Bubble Butt” Video (feat. Bruno Mars, 2 Chainz, Tyga & Mystic)(NSFW)

Major Lazer - Bubble Butt (feat. Bruno Mars, 2 Chainz, Tyga & Mystic) - Directed by Eric Wareheim (NSFW)

Eric Wareheim (of Tim And… fame) and Diplo’s Major Lazer have a longstanding relationship when it comes to the dancehall-inflected project’s visual needs. Wareheim introduced a Passa Passa-uninitiated to daggering via the day-glo dryhump sessions in the video for “Pon De Floor” and turned Lazer’s especially-poppy “Keep It Goin’ Louder” into a summertime nightmare. His propensity for the physically-odd-and-off-putting lines up with Diplo’s similar sense of humor and adoration for women’s posteriors, so who else to direct the video for “Bubble Butt”? The clip features three girls still riding the #seapunk wave, lackadaisically twerking for Tumblr until they’re confronted with a booty-popping she-giant of sorts. The result is bouquet of bountiful butts bouncing along to guest vocals from 2 Chainz, Bruno Mars, Tyga, and Mystic. It is absolutely not safe for work, unless bethonged bottoms are ok in your office.

Caged Animals – “Cindy + Me” Video

NJ weird-popster Vincent Cacchione is gearing up to release a new record later this year, preceded by the clattering synth-bounce of lead single “Cindy + Me.” Sonically the track is built on a sample from Raymond Scott’s “Cindy Electronium”; thematically, it takes its cues from Bonnie & Clyde. That just leaves visually which, in the hands of director Carlos Lopez Estrada, takes dashes of both (weird science; cutaways to a pretty girl) and otherwise plays with the band’s name, setting loose some zoo denizens to see if Vin can pass their stress tests. Check it:

Glass Candy – “Beautiful Object” Video

Earlier this month, the long-anticipated second installment of Italians Do It Better’s After Dark series was released. Naturally, there are a legion of Johnny Jewel-driven tracks from Chromatics, Desire, as well as “Let’s Kiss” by his solo effort Mirage and his project with Ida No, Glass Candy. Today, they’ve released a video for the track “Beautiful Object” comprised of grainy documentary footage shot in their Montreal studio by Martin D’ Argensio. The label will also drop a few physical releases this week, including a remastering of Glass Candy’s Beatbox on clear vinyl, a white vinyl repressing of Chromatics’ Kill For Love, a non-digital After Dark 2, as well as restocking of t-shirts.

Anna Kendrick - Cups (Pitch Perfect's "When I'm Gone") (Director's Cut)

Music video by Anna Kendrick performing Cups (Pitch Perfect's "When I'm Gone") (Director's Cut).

From movie to radio single to music video, Anna Kendrick's "Cups," her a cappella hit from last year's "Pitch Perfect," has become a cultural entity of its own. In the film, Kendrick's Beca sings the song "When I'm Gone," a cover of Lulu and the Lampshades' "You're Gonna Miss Me," along with the band's now-famous cup-slap technique.

In the video Kendrick doesn't play Beca from "Pitch Perfect"'s Beca, but is a young girl stuck working in a small town diner dreaming of escaping. While looking up at travel posters, Kendrick rolls out dough and cuts out circles with, of course, a cup -- cute and clever, but a bit saccharine. But no, the cups don't stop there! The original a cappella track, now accompanied by a Mumford and Sons-esque guitar, plays as a flour-covered Kendrick sings and walks around the restaurant while every customer does the little cup jig.

The video is cute and fun as the entire restaurant flips and slaps their cups in sync, but not quite so-cheesy-it's-good, unless perhaps you're a 14 year-old-girl or a diehard "Pitch Perfect" fan. Yet with the popularity of the film and song, this video may just mark the beginning of a music career for Ms. Kendrick. After all her voice isn't bad, but let's hope the cup thing dies out.

Avionica - "Desde Cero" Video

Musica : Avionica
Letra : Vega
Productor : Sebastian Krys
Director : Ariel Annexy Labault

Revoke - "Singular" Video

A lot of nice moments in this rotoscope music video for Singular “Revoke” by Bangkok-based Famefamous (aka Nitcha Tothong)

Daft Punk "Da Funk" Video

Daft Punk "Da Funk" (Spike Jonze, dir.) - 1997

Hard to imagine but the 1997 introduction to Daft Punk didn't feature Daft Punk and their distinctive helmet heads at all.

Instead they let director Spike Jonze deliver a typical, yet certainly odd New York story about a man named Charles. Correction: Charles is a man with a dog's head, played by Tony Maxwell of the band That Dog (which is possibly a coincincedence, but certainly awesome). And he looks like he might Get Lucky, despite the busted leg.

Prince – “Fixurlifeup” Video

Prince recorded his new single “Fixurlifeup” with 3rd Eye Girl, the new badass all-female backing band that played with him at last weekend’s Billboard Music Awards. The song is practically a grunge swirl with a Prince vocal over the top, at least until it turns into early-’90s funk-metal near the end, and it’s really fucking good. The new video, from director Sanaa Hamri, captures a bunch of electric live footage from a recent San Diego show. With most people, a live-footage music video is a total halfass move. Not with Prince.

Kanye West – “New Slaves” Video

As a broad-strokes vision designed to get people talking and to (once again) reinvent its maker, everything about this was masterful. But consider the little cinematic touches, too, like the way the sweat on Kanye’s face and the actual coloration of the building behind him made Kanye’s skin look darker, or the way he stands completely motionless, not nodding, during the parts where he isn’t rapping. A four-minute close-up on one man’s face should not be this riveting, but it absolutely was.

Charli XCX – “Take My Hand” Video

True Romance, the excellent debut album from the British pop singer Charli XCX, is pretty much nothing but potential hits, and now another one of them has a video. In the clip for the twinkling and sighing “Take My Hand,” from director Ryan Andrews, Charli swans around a frenetic dance party, throwing come-hither looks in every possible direction. It’s quite a performance.

Caveman – “In the City” Video

The New York indie-pop band Caveman rounded up a pretty impressive cast for their video for “In The City,” the first single from their self-titled sophomore album. The clip stars Julia Stiles and the Dollhouse actor Fran Kranz as a tourist couple visiting New York, and it looks like a fun visit before a creepy hotel bellhop gets involved and things take a darker turn. Philip Di Fiore directs.

Thao & The Get Down Stay Down – “Holy Roller”

“Holy Roller” was the first song that Thao Nguyen wrote for We The Common, her new album as Thao & The Get Down Stay Down. The jittery indie-folk tune was also the first song we heard from the album, and now it’s the first one to get a video. In director Mimi Cave‘s clip, Nguyen and a few friends lip-sync the song dramatically, and then special effects come in and mash up their faces in increasingly disturbing ways.

The Lonely Island – “SEMICOLON” (Feat. Solange) Lyric Video

It is yet another #WACKWEDNESDAY for the Lonely Island and today they’ve released an attempted-grammar lesson called “SEMICOLON” featuring guest vocals from Solange. Utilizing the Drake-popularized lyrical device of hashtag rap (example: “we run the game; umpire”), the four try to explain how the polarizing punctuation mark works. Except they do not at all and their teacher, voiced by Maya Rudolph, makes sure they know it. Come for the punchlines (there’s one about A.L.F.!), but, seriously, do not use this as grammar gospel. Get your laughs.

Julia Holter – “World” Video

Last year, the Los Angeles singer and producer Julia Holter released Ekstasis, an album of gauzy and elliptical and weirdly comforting experimental pop music. That LP turned out to be very valuable in helping some of us slow down and breathe and chill the fuck out from time to time. Later this summer, she’ll follow that album up with a new one, her first proper studio effort, called Loud City Song. And now she’s shared the slow, warm, beautiful opening track “World” in the form of a flickering, elusive video from the director Rick Bahto.

Azrock & Pogo - "I'll Wait Here"

London company Planet Jump presents a charming animated music video, I’ll Wait Here, for  Azrock & Pogo

Walt & Vervain - "Babe's Lair" Video

Walt & Vervain - Babe's Lair, directed by Joseph

Stephen Walking - "Short Shorts" Video

Stephen Walking - "Short Shorts" (Dir. The Cobourg Boys)

Miss Chain & The Broken Heels - "Calcutta"

Director: Ivana Smudja
Dop: Luca Esposito @2dop
Producer: Davide Ferazza
Prod Company: Withstand (withstandfilm.com)
Styling - Camilla Magnani
Make Up Artist: Silvia Murciano
Set Designer: Alice Rocchetta e Amos Caparotta
Audio: Marco Monti
Cast: Sofia Spacca

theHEAD - March of the Otters

theHEAD - March of the Otters (Directed by Andrew King)

theHEAD formed in 2002, with a lineup of Ben Turley, Tom Taylor and Scott Herbert, sharing multi-instrumental and writing duties. Danny Heifetz (drums – Mr Bungle, Dieselhed) joined soon afterwards. theHEAD serve up a mix of analog synths and acoustic instruments from a pop-rock point of view.

March of the Otters is a synth rock track with robot vocals about the day to day trials of boozed-up otters: a story that speaks to every modern heart. The video: directed by Andrew King, edited by Tom McMahon and designed by theHEAD’s Tom Taylor is a world-class triumph of puppetry, set design and silliness.

She & Him – “I Could’ve Been Your Girl” Video

For certain segments of the population, including some of us who may be reluctant to admit such things, an adorable Zooey Deschanel dance routine is pretty much audio-visual crack cocaine. And that group of people (which, let’s be honest, probably encompasses Stereogum’s entire readership, as well as its staff) should enjoy the living hell out of She & Him’s new video for “I Could’ve Been Your Girl.” Deschanel herself directed this one, in which she tries and fails to get the attention of her bandmate M. Ward. This probably makes band practice awkward.

Lightning Dust - "Diamond" (Official Video)

The Vancouver duo Lightning Dust is a side project of the great Black Mountain, and their new single “Diamond” is the romantic soft-focus new-wave jam that nobody ever expected them to write. With the song’s video, director Helen Reed tells a nice story about using art to overcome mundanity. It shows us three women who bust into a seemingly spur-of-the-moment synchronized swimming routine in a dingy public pool.

When Saints Go Machine – “Iodine” Video

In the video for “Iodine,” the latest single from Copenhagen electro-poppers When Saints Go Machine, a mysterious radiation-suited figure drives an old-school ragtop out to the middle of the desert, descends into a bottomless pit, and explores the crystalline cave he finds down there. You know, normal Sunday-afternoon stuff. Kristian Nordentoft and William Reynish direct the slow but absorbing clip.

The Thermals – “The Sunset” Video

In Portland punks the Thermals’ video for “The Sunset,” the second single from their new album Desperate Ground, badass bassist Kathy Foster gets a star turn. She plays a boxer training for a big fight with, as far as I can tell, the camera operator, and she also gives us her version of Rosie Perez’s dance from the Do The Right Thing opening credits. The band co-directed the video with Jeffrey Rowles.

Action Bronson - "Strictly 4 My Jeeps" (Official Video)

The great Queens rap redbeard Action Bronson is working on a full-length mixtape with the New York producer Harry Fraud. In the track’s brand-new video, from director Jason Goldwatch, Bronson takes us to a cartoonish Queens universe and shows us that he knows how to drain jump shots, prepare feasts, and turn cartwheels. The video also has a whole lot of unnecessary fat-people humor and a truly necessary Riff Raff appearance.

Dirty Beaches – “Casino Lisboa”

On the new double album Drifters/Love Is The Devil, Alex Zhang Hungtai’s Dirty Beaches project pushes its combination of tense lo-fi noise and sweaty rockabilly beyond its logical conclusion, laying on the bad vibes incredibly thick. And the group’s new video for the knife-edge throb “Casino Lisboa” has its own dark glamor to it. The video was shot in some Asian metropolis (Bangkok, I’m thinking), and it mixes footage of the Dirty Beaches live show with images of local breakdancers, strippers, and Muay Thai fighters.

Palma Violets – “Best Of Friends” / "We Found Love"

In the starkly arty black-and-white video for their charged-up anthem “Best Of Friends,” we see the members of the anarchic, party-starting British band Palma Violets rocking out before a bored and hostile crowd and committing petty acts of street crime. It’s a far cry from the drunken revelry of their “We Found Love” video, but it has its own kind of energy to it.

Palma Violets - We Found Love

Queens of the Stone Age - "My God Is The Sun" (Official Video)

Hey, another one of these! The fifth bloodily animated video for a song from the new Queens Of The Stone Age album …Like Clockwork is for the epic, churning, triumphant first single “My God Is The Sun.” In the clip, the dead stars of the videos for “I Appear Missing,” “Kalopsia,” “Keep Your Eyes Peeled,” and “If I Had A Tail” all reawaken as a gigantic winged sun rises in the sky. It all plays out like something a shop-class stoner might dream if he fell asleep watching Heavy Metal.

The Lonely Island – “Diaper Money” Video

The Lonely Island – “Diaper Money” Video. Direct: http://myplay.me/10ym

Watch Sigur Rós On The Simpsons

Earlier this month, we learned that Sigur Rós would guest on, and provide music for, an episode of The Simpsons entitled “The Saga Of Carl,” one that involves Homer’s friend Carl returning to his homeland in Iceland. Well, last night, the episode aired, and Sigur Rós were indeed in it for a split second. (There’s also a quick cameo from someone who looks like Björk.) But the real draw, from a music standpoint, is that Sigur Rós gave the episode a whole lot of dreamy, slow-floating music, including an ethereal end-credits rendition of the show’s theme song. As Pitchfork points out, you can now watch the episode online here; you’ll find Björk at 11:15 and Sigur Rós at 17:20.

Mikal Cronin – “Change”

Mikal Cronin – “Change” (Dir. Claire Marie Vogel)

This is a seriously funk punk-rock slice-of-life video even before the invisible man shows up, and the special effects are pretty great for what must be a pretty tiny budget. But the real reason to watch this one is, of course, the admirably sweet story, the utterly relatable feeling of being a kid who’s trying and failing and finally succeeding at finding a place for yourself in some freak scene. I’ve felt something like that final smile a few times in my life, and I cherish all of them.

Y.N.RichKids – “My Bike”

Y.N.RichKids – “My Bike” & The NSJ Crew – “Khaki Pants” (Dir. Ben Hughes)

You can’t ask me to choose between Y.N.RichKids’ video about riding bikes and the Y.N.RichKids side project‘s video about looking cool while wearing your school uniform. You just can’t. It’s impossible. They both win. It’s been almost a year since “Hot Cheetos & Takis,” and it does my heart good to know that these kids are still rapping like unhinged adorable demons and that they’ve apparently become local heroes in their hometown. They’re hanging out with Slug and Brother Ali! They’re doing synchronized bike-dances at the Vikings’ training facility! They’re getting piggyback rides from roller derby girls and baseball mascots! They’re skipping their fancy pants and doing the khaki dance! Pay special attention to Ben 10, the little screaming kid with the dreads and the Angry Birds shirts, because he is the best kid. If I had a record label, I would sign him immediately. I’d sign all of them.

Gunplay – “Bible On The Dash” (Music Video)

Gunplay, Maybach Music’s resident knuckle-throwing knucklehead, is both one of the most fearsomely unhinged rappers on the current rap landscape and straight-up one of the most gifted rappers out right now. One of the man’s crowning achievements is “Bible On The Dash,” a track from last year’s 601 & Snort mixtape that gives some emotive context to all the fire-breathing that Gunplay does on other tracks. It’s now got a video, one that Gunplay co-directed with Ryan Snyder, and it’s mostly shots of Gunplay driving around and looking contemplative.

Chelsea Light Moving – “Lip” Video

Given what we now know about Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore’s breakup, we shouldn’t hold our collective breath for a Sonic Youth reunion anytime soon. Instead, we should probably settle in with Moore’s new band Chelsea Light Moving, who have a new video for their skronky hardcore anthem “Lip.” The clip chops up band-performance footage and images of protesters clashing with riot cops. It’s credited to “Eva at Ecstatic Peace Library,” and that probably means Eva Prinz, whose name has been in internet circulation a bunch lately.

Books Of Love – “Space Time”

Books Of Love is a duo comprised of Vivian Girls/La Sera’s Katy Goodman and Greta Morgan of the Hush Sound. The union was conceived when the two were walking by Griffith Conservatory in Los Angeles and wanted to write a song about finding love in another dimension. Check out their song “Space Time” and its delightful video, featuring Goodman and Morgan searching for a green man to love.

The-Dream – “IV Play”

The-Dream made a video for his absolutely bananas track “IV Play” — one of the best songs of the year, for my money — and it could not be any more boring. You have Director X as craftsman here! He got Onyx and 50 Cent rapping in a hockey rink! Drake to reenact his bar mitzvah! Essentially wrote the Ciara-Future fan fiction we’ve all been adorably writing in our minds! I understand this is not the song to go literal on, but with that director credit, I expected a little bit more than scenes of slow twerking and a helicopter. Cool fur coat, though.

Queens Of The Stone Age – “If I Had A Tail” Video

“If I Had A Tail” follows “I Appear Missing,” “Kalopsia,” and “Keep Your Eyes Peeled” as the fourth hyperviolent animated video for an incomplete song from the new Queens Of The Stone Age album …Like Clockwork. In this one, our latest cartoonworld sociopath is the driver of a blood-spattered Thunderbird deathmobile with skulls hanging from its rearview mirror, one who gets kicks by tossing molotov cocktails at nearby biker crews. Four videos in, and apparently there are still people in this animated deathscape left to kill. The song, meanwhile, is surprisingly smooth, albeit still heavy as fuck.

Queens Of The Stone Age – “Keep Your Eyes Peeled” Video

In a pair of recent gruesomely animated videos, Queens Of The Stone Age have previewed large chunks of “I Appear Missing” and “Kalopsia,” two of the songs from their new album …Like Clockwork. Now they’ve extended the series with the slow, crushing “Keep Your Eyes Peeled,” as the song soundtracks a video about a grimy, grinning, spiky-helmeted motherfucker. In the clip, he walks around an apocalyptic, mutant-populated city, punching heads off bodies and starting fires for no discernible reason. It’s a fun time.

!!! – ”One Girl/One Boy”" Video

Longtime seedy disco/funk outfit !!! have their uniquely titled new album THR!!!ER out now on Warp, and a new video for its latest single “One Girl/Bone Boy.” What this means for you at home is another opportunity to see Nic Offer’s short-shorts in motion, inside a florally psychedelic and energetic visual treatment.

Florence and the Machine - "Lover to Lover" (Dir. Vincent Haycock)

The English Songstress Performs a Tale of American Heartbreak in Vincent Haycock's New Video 

A relationship falls apart in the desert towns and fog-soaked coast of California as the baroque pop chanteuse and Karl Lagerfeld and Gucci muse Florence Welch takes on a cinematic role in this second collaboration with LA-based director Vincent Haycock. After helming the narrative music video for Welch’s Calvin Harris-produced disco hit “Sweet Nothing”, Haycock wanted to further explore singer’s interest in acting in his film for “Lover to Lover”, the latest single from her hit sophomore album Ceremonials. “She wasn’t just Florence, she was playing a character,” he says. “It was exciting to take someone who’s built such an iconic visual style, with the floaty dresses and distinct look of her videos, and do something really different.” Performing opposite Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn, who stars alongside Brad Pitt in the forthcoming flick, Killing Them Softly, Welch's on-screen interpretation echoes the track’s heart-aching refrain, “There’s no salvation for me now.” Beginning in a drab Los Angeles house and building to a cathartic gospel frenzy, the romance ends as the lovesick heroine disappears amid mist into the Pacific Ocean. “The waves were enormous, it was freezing cold and four in the morning—I was weeping all the way in I was so scared,” recounts the MTV Award-winning singer, laughing. “It was the most intense experience because we shot the whole day before; I went back to the hotel, slept for three hours, woke up and dove into the sea.”

More: Nowness.

Pond – “Giant Tortoise”

While not barefoot and relatively sedate onstage with Tame Impala, bassist Nick Allbrook plays the part of kinetically charged, livewire frontman for his own band Pond, a project cut from similarly psilocybic, riff-loaded, flanged-out cloth. Allbrook’s ecstatic fits tend to be one step shy of you being legit worried he’s having a seizure, though obviously he’s got the stoner-mellow thing down cold, too. So “Giant Tortoise,” the first single and video from Pond’s forthcoming fifth LP Hobo Rocket, has all those elements in one — it opens with a Primal Scream churn before moving into decidedly Mercury Revved up psych terrain; blissed out verses, fiery hooks, harmonized riffs. The official video captures footage of the band spazzing out at SXSW 2012 juxtaposed with slow motion liquid splashes, explosions, martial arts, dancing, babes, sports highlights, immolation, and pretty much anything else you could imagine tripping youths YouTubing while peaking. (It actually looks like the held a camera up to a laptop streaming things on YouTube in most instances.)

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – “Dark Water”

Here video for the EP track “Dark Water,” one that has the two band members appearing as claymation figures piloting a submarine, while various stage-musical types act out a story of a girl underwater.

CREDITS:
Creator: Joe Baughman http://josephbaughman.com 1st Assistant Director: Andrew DeSelm

Gaffer: Daniel Jeter Grip: Drew Beaty Production Assistants: Ian McSherry, Brandon Kercher Dolly Grip: Michael Baughman Scuba Advisor: Rick Hall Armature Costume Creator: Tina Baughman Special Thanks: Cornerstone Theater (Muncie, Indiana), Dean McIntosh

Animators: Joe Baughman, Daniel Jeter, Michael Baughman Sculptors: Joe Baughman, Michael Baughman, Rachel Phipps

MØ – “Waste Of Time”

Wampire – “Orchards”

The video features the duo on a road trip that goes haywire when an unexpected extra passenger comes along for the ride. It’s the right kind of silly for a band who named themselves after a nickname gifted to member Eric Phipps by a group of goths in Germany.

Queens of the Stone Age - "Kalopsia" Video

Queens of the Stone Age recorded a song for their new album called "Kalopsia", which means "a condition wherein things appear more beautiful than they are." They're certainly toying with the idea of beauty (or lack thereof) in the song's gory, dark, animated new video, which was created by the UK artist Boneface (who also designed the album cover).

Holy Ghost! - "Dumb Disco Ideas" Video

DFA duo Holy Ghost! are gearing up to release a new album called Dynamics, their first since 2011's self-titled debut. It doesn't have a release date yet, but it does have a lead single, "Dumb Disco Ideas". Here's the video, directed by Ben Fries, in which a full band's worth of instruments take on a life of their own on a New York City rooftop. 

Kendrick Lamar – “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” (Explicit)

“Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” may have been the most instantly iconic song on the young rap god Kendrick Lamar’s masterful 2012 album Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City, but it’s only now getting a video. The first time you see it, the clip is both beautiful and confounding — Kendrick and his associates, dressed all in white, attending a funeral that doubles as a raucous party. As it turns out, though, there’s a punchline, one I won’t give away. I laughed. You might, too. Kendrick’s Black Hippy confederates make cameos, as do Juicy J and the comedian Mike Epps.

Melody's Echo Chamber - "Some Time Alone, Alone" (Official Music Video)

Last year, French pop singer Melody Prochet released her self-titled debut as Melody's Echo Chamber (produced by Tame Impala's Kevin Parker). Now, her album cut "Some Time Alone, Alone" gets a video that's appropriately suited to its title. In the clip, directed by Grant Singer, Prochet spends some time alone (alone) on the rides at La Habra Citrus Fair in California.

Ed Schrader’s Music Beat – “Radio Eyes” Video

Ed Schrader’s Music Beat – “Radio Eyes” Video.

 In the clip, the band’s two members occupy some sort of hellish academic realm, one full of sentient apples and grabby disembodied hands. Philip Leaman directs.

Young Galaxy – “Fall For You”

The Montreal band Young Galaxy makes sparkling, straightforward synthpop, but the two videos they’ve released for tracks from their new album Ultramarine are both weird as fuck. Their “Pretty Boy” video was a love story about two people in unbelievably creepy masks. And their new all-CGI clip for the tropical throb “Fall For You” shows us alternate-universe science experiments where music makes wavforms ripple, cacti dance, and singing polygonal faces appear from thin air.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield Covers Bowie's 'Space Oddity' in Space

Canadian commander Chris Hadfield has shared with the world his cover version of David Bowie's Space Oddity, which he recorded on the International Space Station.

The full video was posted on YouTube shortly before Hadfield handed over command of the space station to Russia's Pavel Vinogradov.

Hadfield has been on the International Space Station since December 2012 and in command of the vessel since March. He will now return to Earth.

Footage courtesy of Chris Hadfield, NASA and CSA

Lana Del Rey - “Young & Beautiful” Video

Baz Luhrmann’s godawful-looking Great Gatsby adaptation is in theaters now, and you had to know that Lana Del Rey would be the first of the artists on its star-studded soundtrack album to make a video for her contribution. Del Rey’s video for the slow-swelling “Young & Beautiful” is a gorgeously photographed thing, with LDR dressed up in striking Jazz Age iconography and a shadowy orchestra supplying the atmosphere. It doesn’t exactly fit with the movie that it ties in with, but the whole thing is shot like an Italian horror movie from the ’70s, and that’s a good thing. Chris Sweeney directs.

Foxygen - “No Destruction”

Foxygen’s “No Destruction” is a lovely piece of lazy, Dylanesque, gently sprawling psych-pop, and it plays out like an extended lyrical inside joke, one you wish you understood a little better. The song’s new video has a similarly fun, homespun vibe to it. In the clip, the band’s members, dressed like cowboys, get into hijinks on what looks like an old Western film set. And director Bryan Felber, an old friend of band members Sam France and Jonathan Rado, adds in footage from films that the three of them made when they were in high school and college.

Pusha T – “Numbers On The Boards”

A rare example of a rap video that makes its presence known with patience and atmosphere, all minimal foreboding restraint. So Me generally tends toward the brilliantly hyperactive, but here he sticks with dark hallways and weathered stone, and it’s absolutely the right choice.

The National – “Sea Of Love” Video

The National’s new album Trouble Will Find Me is only a couple of weeks away from release, and they’ve now dropped a video for one of its songs, the gracefully churning brood “Sea Of Love.” Director Sophia Peer has made a decidedly simple video for the song; it’s just a single, unmoving camera shot of the band, wearing matching black suits, playing in a small white room, while a little kid, also in a black suit, plays air guitar and frantically mugs. This kid is awesome, and they should seriously consider making him an onstage hypeman for the next tour. 

Look:Звуки Му - грубый закат

The Smith Westerns – “Varsity”

Chicago glam rockers the Smith Westerns return next month with their new album Soft Will, and their new video for the shimmering lead single “Varsity” is full of close-up shots of things that scream springtime: juicy grapefruits, flowers blowing in wind, loft-elevator makeout sessions. There’s a gorgeous rooftop sunset scene in there, too. Alan Del Rio Ortiz directs, filling everything with dreamy washes of light. 

David Bowie – “The Next Day” Video Starring Gary Oldman and Marion Cotillard

Update: As Billboard points out, the video has been removed from YouTube "because its content violated YouTube's Terms of Service". It can still be watched below via Vevo.

For his third video from The Next Day, David Bowie is keeping things cinematic and strange. Obviously. Here once more is Floria Sigismundi, again directing A-list movie stars (last time Tilda Swinton, this time Marion Cotillard and Gary Oldman) in a typical tale of the church, a brothel, and a stigmata-afflicted prostitute. It’s an idea “written and conceived” by David Himself, and the second time Bowie and Oldman have collaborated (see also: 1995′s Reeves Gabrels album The Sacred Squall of Now, and the next year’s film Basquiat).

Ok, here again:

Northern Bells – “Animal Kingdom” Video

Eric Power has been quietly making a name for himself as a music video director with his unique paper cutout animations. The process seems sort of similar to how early South Park episodes were made — except while Matt Stone and Trey Parker often revel in the cheapness of their medium, Power’s lavish animations are devastatingly beautiful and creepily atmospheric. The new video for Northern Bells’ “Animal Kingdom” depicts the journey of three different monsters and their shared fate. Bringing to mind influences as disparate as Eric Carle’s children’s books and the suffocating darkness of the video game Limbo, Power has created something very distinct and poignant.

The Lonely Island – “Spring Break Anthem” Video (Feat. Zach Galifianakis & James Franco)

Free Time – “I Lost Again”

Free Time, a quartet who moved from Melbourne to New York, play jangly and fuzzy old-school indie-pop, and they’ve got a self-titled debut album coming out later this month. In the video for their song “I Lost Again,” the members of the band casually wander into a warehouse-space elevator and begin playing their song together, acting like this is a perfectly normal thing for people to be doing. Charles Poekel directs the remarkably pleasant clip.

PVT – “Homosapien”

The picture above just can’t convey the simple coolness of PVT’s new video for the title track of last year’s album, Homosapien. Imagine the brilliant re-edit of The Antlers they did recently, now picture them doing something similar to their own music video. Director Clemens Habicht’s video would be nice enough, with its stark black and white, but he then alters and edits the framerate with surgical precision. The effect, much like the fantastic song, makes the video shift between jerkiness and smoothness, with quick movements (both aural and visual in this case) that hit you almost subliminally.

Shellshag – “Driving Song”

In their video for “Forever,” we saw the long-running DIY punk duo Shellshag assembling their singular onstage rig-up at time-lapse speeds. Their new video for the warm and fuzzy “Driving Song” is, in its own way, just as low-tech and charming, thanks to the adorably terrible greenscreen effects that put John Shell and Jen Shag and their friends into a model-train universe. In the clip, Shell and Shag play wily hobo crooks on the run from the authorities. Corey Tatarczuk and David Hale direct.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Mosquito” Video

The video for “Sacrifice,” the first single from the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album Mosquito, was a pretty great widescreen event-video sort of thing, deeply satisfying on an old-school MTV-ready level. But the band decided to go weird on the album’s second video, for the title track. The whole clip focuses on a CGI mosquito landing on a kid’s hand and drinking his blood. It’s not quite as terrifying as the bug on the album’s godawful cover art, but it’s still pretty nightmarish, and it gets more so as the video gets progressively more psychedelic. If you can make it through the whole video without clicking on another tab, you are a stronger person than me. B. Shimbe Shim directs.

Biffy Clyro – “Different People” Live In London

Laura Marling – “Master Hunter” (Video)

Singer-songwriter Laura Marling has already released some really lovely songs in anticipation of her new album Once I Was An Eagle, but something is very … off (in a good way) in her video for recent single, “Master Hunter.” Marling plays to a dimly lit scene of a couple dancing and struggling that is either sensually violent or violently sensual, with jerky movements that suggest J-horror as much as a sex scene. It’s a beautifully dark video, and (like a lot of great music videos) puts the song in a context that’s hard to forget. It’s worth noting that Marling adds a new coda to the song, a brief pulse of dissonance that perfectly complements the unsettling final twist of the video. Marling has been shining all year, and this video just adds another facet.

Queens Of The Stone Age – “I Appear Missing” Video

UK artist Bonaface animated Queens of the Stone Age's post-apocalyptic, wasteland-set "I Appear Missing" music video. It's quite intense.

Team Spirit – “MRDR It’s Ok” (Official Video)

The last time Team Spirit, the new party-riff band led by former Passion Pit member Ayad Al Adhamy, released a video, it was for “Jesus, He’s Alright.” It was a live-action thing about drunken debauchery in a church, but it ended with the members of the band becoming animated characters and being sent into hell’s deepest depths. Their latest video, for “MRDR It’s Ok,” starts out where that one left off, with Satan forcibly conscripting the band into duty as his wedding band before the band’s members take matters into their own hands. The vision of hell, from the Swedish animation duo HannesJohannes, is a vivid, cartoonishly gruesome, vaguely NSFW thing. Whatever happens in the rest of Team Spirit’s career, they can tell their grandkids that their animated avatars used guitars to decapitate demons.

The Flaming Lips – “You Lust” (NSFW)

“You Lust” is the pounding 13-minute drone-groove at the heart of the Flaming Lips new album The Terror, and its video cuts the song down to a more manageable four minutes. It does not, however, do anything else to make the song more digestible. In the clip, we see a naked man and a naked woman lying in the middle of a room, their body parts hooked up to freaky electrodes, while three more naked women do experiments on them and frogs and monkeys crawl around them. You know, normal stuff. Please be advised that the nudity is an extra-visceral type of nudity. If you feel like you’re ready.

Is Tropical - "Dancing Anymore" (NSFW)

A word of warning: if you’re not fantastically keen on imagery of a pornographic nature then don’t watch this video. Or if you’re in a workplace with other people that aren’t necessarily as broadminded as yourself, then you should take the NSFW label seriously…

But for everyone else – well, go ahead and enjoy Megaforce’s video for Is Tropical’s Dancing Anymore – which, although it contains explicit and relentless sexual imagery, is not actually pornography. Not really.

It is, of course, the follow-up to the French directing team’s sensational, hugely successful video for Is Tropical’s The Greeks, and it is very much its conceptual sequel. And it shares a good deal of The Greeks’ genius too. It’s just that instead of cartoon violence from the imaginations of small boys playing Nerf gun wargames, we are confronted with the contents of an male adolescent’s brain, at the point when he has the opportunity for some serious masturbation action…

Dancing Anymore is the first single from Is Tropical's upcoming album "I'm Leaving"

Video directed by MEGAFORCE
Produced by : Kitsuné and Iconoclast
Production Company: Iconoclast.tv
Head of CGi : Yann Aldabe, Jehan Bouazza

Kurt Vile - "Never Run Away"

Kurt Vile’s wonderful new album Waking On A Pretty Daze, one of the year’s best, is a languorous sprawl, and you wouldn’t expect it to lend itself to elegant graphic design or stark iconography. But in making the proper video for Vile’s song “Never Run Away”, the great directing team HARRYS dressed Vile in an all-white ensemble and filmed him in 35mm. We see Vile playing a white guitar and riding an all-white school bus, slouching his way around the more desolate reaches of his native Philadelphia. It’s a weirdly perfect video.

Bibio – “À Tout À L’Heure”

The British producer Bibio has said that he recorded “À Tout À L’Heure,” the hazily psychedelic first single from his new album Silver Wilkinson, while he was outside in his yard on a sunny day, using things like garden shears and watering cans as instruments. And now he’s linked up with Russell Weekes to co-direct the song’s video himself, using ancient 8mm stock footage and slow-rotating silhouettes to make a pleasantly druggy visual, something that looks like it could’ve been projected on a wall at a late-’60s nightclub.

Austra – “Home” (Official Video)

A few years ago, the operatic Toronto art-punk veteran Katie Stelmanis put together the witchy synthpop band Austra, and their excellent debut album Feel It Break was one of the great surprises of 2011. Next month, they’ll follow it up with the sophomore effort Olymbia, and they’ve already shared the floridly gorgeous first single “Home.” Now they’ve linked with the directorial duo that go to make a video for the song. The clip consists of a single steady shot of a depressed-looking Stelmanis, sitting numbly while other Austra members flit around her.

Janelle Monáe – “Q.U.E.E.N.” Video (Feat. Erykah Badu)

Whoo! Last month, Janelle Monáe released her Erykah Badu-assisted single “Q.U.E.E.N.,” an irresistible art-funk strut. And today, we get the sort of video that makes an already-great song even better. The new “Q.U.E.E.N.” video is a triumph of vicious charisma and graphic design, starring Monáe and Badu as thawed-out rebels who throw a dance-party in a futuristic museum. And it is so good. Monáe debuts an absolutely deadly early-’60s mod mook, her friends get to show off some crispy dance steps, and Badu gets a perfectly badass entrance. If I don’t get any more work done today, it’s because I’m watching this over and over. Directed by Alan Ferguson