7/31/2013

Jackson Scott - "That Awful Sound" (Official Music Video)



North Carolina guitar-pop dude Jackson Scott released his debut LP Melbourne earlier this month via Fat Possum. Now, he's shared the video for album highlight "That Awful Sound". Directed by nautico, it features birthday candles, lips, and blood that all fluctuate between a series of trippy mood ring colors.
Scott also has a tour scheduled, with dates running into the fall.

Avicii - "Wake Me Up" (Official Video)



Directed by: Mark Seliger & CB Miller. Video production by At Night studios.

To watch an exclusive Behind The Scenes filmed on the set of the 'Wake Me Up' video and for amazing Avicii competitions, android users can download the free Xperia Lounge app here: http://bit.ly/Xperia-Lounge-App

Justin Timberlake – “Take Back The Night” Video



Justin Timberlake – “Take Back The Night” Video

The clip features three visions of Timberlake’s nighttime experience: at the club, the afterhours meal, and, of course, a live performance. Everyone’s shirts stay on this time.

Chance The Rapper – “Everybody’s Something” (Official Video)


Acid Rap, the new mixtape from the squeaky and inventive young Chicago rising star Chance The Rapper, might be 2013′s best mixtape to date. And now it gets another video, for the self-affirming jazzy lope “Everybody’s Something.” The Austin Vesely-directed clip shows Chance as a body floating through space, with images of his hometown projected over his own features, to weirdly moving effect.

7/30/2013

Andrés Calamaro - Cuando no estás



Andrés Calamaro - Cuando no estás. Dir: Leo Damario.

Califone – “Stitches” Interactive Video

Califone - Stitches

The Chicago roots-rock travelers Califone have a new album called Stitches coming soon, and they’ve taken an unorthodox approach in making the video for the album’s elegiac title track. Along with filmmaker Braden King and programmer Jeff Garneau, they’ve made an interactive video that draws imagery — both still and in gif form — from a bunch of curated Tumblrs. The idea is that the video will change every time you watch it. I don’t think I managed to make it work right, but you can give it a shot here.

William Tyler – “A Portrait Of Sarah”



Nashville-based William Tyler’s guitar meditations are steeped in Americana and ramble in a manner evocative of the open road, all winding highways and byways and uncanny valleys. And so the video for “A Portrait Of Sarah,” from this year’s Impossible Truth, is a fittingly filmic bit — and an overt homage to the 1971 roadtrip flick Two-Lane Blacktop. That film starred James Taylor. Here, William Tyler stars, as James Taylor. Sometimes life just makes sense.

Sebadoh – “All Kinds”



Sebadoh, the ’90s-indie greats led by Dinosaur Jr.’s Lou Barlow, are about to release Defend Yourself, the first studio album they’ve made since the ’90s ended. Last week, we posted the first single “I Will,” a very encouraging sign that this could belong to the Dinosaur Jr. school of reunions, the ones that effortlessly recapture the old band’s original grace. And now the band’s made a video for another album track, the short, fast, ramshackle “All Kinds.” Directed by Adam Harding, it’s an appealingly homemade video, full of pet close-ups and shots of band members goofing off in the studio. Also, Barlow throws a couch.

Night Moves – “Colored Emotions”



For the video for the title track from Night Moves’ album Colored Emotions, they maintained the ’70s feel from their “Country Queen” clip but with extra oddities. The Isaac Gale and David Jensen-directed video features a fast food backyard picnic on a waterbed which doesn’t end well.

When Saints Go Machine – “System Of Unlimited Love” (NSFW)


The new video by Danish electro-pop quartet When Saints Go Machine — for the dreamy, slow-burning, dance hymn “System Of Unlimited Love” on their new record, Infinity Pool — is probably not safe for work. But hey, it’s on YouTube — so it’s definitely art, right?

In any case, it’s a stunning and beautifully human clip for a truly otherworldly song. Erotic dancers slither around poles in a dark room, almost coordinated, carefully off-time; lazy dance-lights splash around the women’s bodies; and as the song drifts into its quiet, ballad-like outro, they glower at the camera in a deadpan and move slowly, like late night ballerinas.

Looks like art after all. Watch it now. (Or, really, don’t watch it at work).


KEN mode – “Secret Vasectomy” (Official Music Video)



The last video released by Winnipeg noise-metal trio KEN mode was legitimately, quite possibly, the most metal video I’ve ever seen, full of leather-clad warrior women and robed druid priests and images of Baphomet and winter landscapes. They’re following that up with a clip of … little kids brushing their teeth and drawing with crayons. It’s still pretty metal: The brushing and drawing is about as intense as the music, and the music is fucking intense; also, the drawings rendered by these kids are at least slightly disquieting. It’s “To Be Continued,” so the next phase of these kids and/or their creations could get a whole lot weirder.

Icona Pop – “Girlfriend”



After a triumphant run on the back of the delirious electro-pop anthem “I Love It,” Swedish duo Icona Pop are set to release a full-length LP, with the existentially affirmative title This Is … Icona Pop. This single, “Girlfriend,” came on 6/4, so it may make the This Is… cut, or it may be a glorified stopgap. “Girlfriend”‘s hook is pure Tupac (indeed he is one of this track’s 11 credited writers), the production is pure lite-EDM endorphin, and the lyric is for the girls (and the Girls.) In the video, the two are Thelma & Louise-ing it on trains, and in front of lasers, across the countryside.

Appaloosa – “Fill The Blanks”



The Berlin/Paris duo Appaloosa is one of the few acts on the Italians Do It Better label that doesn’t count Johnny Jewel as its musical mastermind, though their haunted electro certainly fits in with Jewel’s whole production aesthetic. Their “Fill The Blanks” was one of the sweeter, catchier songs on the great After Dark 2 compilation, released earlier this year. And its new video, from director Raphaëlle Chovin, has the grainy, glammy qualities of so many Glass Candy and Chromatics videos before it.

7/29/2013

Born Gold – “Hunger” (Official Video)



Born Gold is the songwriting moniker of Cecil Frena, a resident of Montreal and staple within the city’s vibrant community of pop experimenters. Born Gold’s next record, I Am An Exit, is out October 8 via three different labels – Art Control, Hovercraft, and Chill Mega Chill. (Frena will support the record with a house-show only tour of North America this fall.) Here’s one super-hooky first cut from the record, “Hunger,” a song that is simultaneously more straightforward and more out-there than his previous releases. Check a wacky video for it, which I think is pretty crucial to understanding the stunning oddities of this sort of warped pop music.

King Khan & The Shrines – “Darkness” (Official Video)


King Khan’s about to release Idle No More, his first album in six years with the psychedelic garage-soul band the Shrines, and we posted their song “Born To Die” a little while back. That song sounded nothing like “Darkness,” a slow-burner ballad and the basis for the band’s new music video. The German animation crew Hylas put the clip together expertly, using a claymation circus strongman and human cannonball to ask some existential questions.

7/25/2013

Franz Ferdinand – “Love Illumination” (Official Video)


Shortly after announcing their impending new album Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, Franz Ferdinand shared a pair of singles, the mercilessly catchy “Right Action” and the saxophone-spiked “Love Illumination.” For the “Right Action” video, the band dug into its past, recruiting “Take Me Out” video director Jonas Odell for some slick graphic-design action. But for “Love Illumination,” they’ve gone a different route. Timothy Saccenti directed this one, filming the band in a freaky fantasyland full of elaborately costumed dancers. A few shots of a lady in pasties nudge this one slightly into NSFW territory.

Volcano Choir – “Bygone” (Official Video)


Volcano Choir: The rare Justin Vernon Bon Iver side project that makes it to a second album! Volcano Choir is Vernon’s project with the members of the Wisconsin post-rock band Collections Of Colonies Of Bees. “Bygone,” the first single from their sophomore LP Repave, is already more concrete and accessible than anything on their 2009 debut Unmap; it could almost be a Bon Iver song. The song’s new music video, from director Michinori Saigo, is just as gorgeously minimal and pastoral as the song. It shows a tree full of light-tubes that turn on and off in time with the song’s tidal rhythms.

Pixies – “Bagboy” (Version 2) Video



Look, the Pixies don’t release original songs too often, so when they do, they’re going to get as much mileage out of it as they possibly can. The hard-pounding and ranty “Bagboy,” the band’s first new song in nine years, already had one anarchic video. And today, they’ve released another video for the same one. This one is a dark and tangled animated clip from Kestrel Media, and it’s full of unnatural animal-singing and dancing cave paintings. Pixies frontman Black Francis says, “We didn’t set out to have two music videos for ‘Bagboy,’ but once we saw both of these, we knew we didn’t want to use just one. They’re so good, so creative, and each in its own way, and both made by up-and-coming filmmakers.”

Pixies – “Bagboy”

The Love Language – “Calm Down” (Official Music Video)



Earlier this summer, longtime Superchunk bassist Laura Ballance announced that she’s battling tinnitus and that she won’t be able to tour with the band anymore. That fucking sucks, but it at least gives her more time to show up in other Merge bands’ videos. Ballance makes a cameo at the beginning of North Carolina indie-poppers the Love Language’s video for “Calm Down,” which follows a heartbroken astronaut as he tries to keep busy wandering around town. Between this and the new Gravity trailer, it’s a rough morning for astronauts. Jonny Gillette directs.

The Child Of Lov – “Fly”


R&B iconoclast the Child Of Lov made his name in part on eye-catching videos for tracks like “Heal” and “Give Me.” He doesn’t appear in either of those, and he also never shows his face in the new PENSACOLA-directed clip for “Fly.” Instead, the video follows a few pretty young people as they skateboard, shoplift, hitchhike, do donuts, and engage in all sorts of other activities that your parents told you not to do. There’s also a sex scene in there that edges into NSFW territory. But the videos greatest strength is in its pervading sense that something terrible is going to happen to all these kids.

7/24/2013

Fiona Apple – “Hot Knife” Video (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)


For a moment in the late ’90s and early ’00s, Fiona Apple and the film director Paul Thomas Anderson were maybe the most interesting famous-people couple on the planet. And Anderson directed a number of Apple’s videos: her “Across The Universe” cover, “Fast As You Can,” “Limp,” the staggering “Paper Bag.” The couple eventually broke up, and the last of those videos came out 13 years ago. But now they’ve reunited for Apple’s new “Hot Knife” video, which is also Anderson’s first music video in 11 years.


“Hot Knife” ended Apple’s The Idler Wheel… and it felt like a bomb dropped at the end of the record: Look, I can do this, too. It’s a sort of ecstatic Broadway standard, the sort of thing that will loop in your head all day if you hear it once in the morning. (Be warned.) For the video, Anderson films Apple playing a drum and singing, and other than some split-screen action and a couple of backup singers, that’s pretty much all you see for the entire course of the video. But Apple is a spellbinding performer, and Anderson knows how to capture an indelible image, so the entire video is riveting.

Nick Catchdubs – “Bizness” (Feat. Iamsu! & Jay Ant)



If we were putting money on it, I’d tell you that Fool’s Gold Records co-owner Nick Catchdubs is the best party DJ in the game right now. In the past few years, he’s dominated Brooklyn and beyond when it comes to throwing down the best tunes for the people on the dancefloor: He can feel out when it’s a party that demands an Atlanta medley or are the kind of people who would lose their minds to hear a seamless weaving of Lil’ Kim’s “Queen Bitch” into Mary J. Blige’s song that samples it, “I Can Love You.” But with so many years of good party vibes-whispering and excellent remixes abound, it was beyond time for Catch to release original material of his own. “Bizness” is his very first solo single, featuring off-kilter, kinetic production, verses from Bay Area rappers Iamsu! and Jay Ant, and a perfectly-placed sample from The Lion King. On top of the original, there are rager-primed remixes from Jeffree’s artist Astronomar and L.A.’s ETC!ETC! and a bananas video — created with alt-comedy network JASH — that flips an office meeting on its head.

Harry Fraud – “Loopy” (Feat. Chinx Drugz & Smoke DZA) Video



A couple of months ago, the great New York psychedelic rap producer Harry Fraud released his collab-heavy High Tide EP for free online. The precise and blippy “Loopy” had verses from Harlem deadeye Smoke DZA and French Montana’s secret weapon Chinx Drugz. But neither rapper shows up in the video. Nor does Fraud, for that matter. Instead, the only person onscreen for almost all of the video is one very art-directed dancing girls. Here’s what Fraud says about the FAFU-directed video: “For ‘Loopy,’ I didn’t want to do a traditional rap video. I wanted something that was fun, wavy and visually more colorful than anything I had previously been a part of. With ‘Loopy,’ I wanted to experiment and make the video that people didn’t expect.”

Quasi – “You Can Stay But You Gotta Go”



Quasi’s “You Can Stay But You Gotta Go” video opens with Janet Weiss playing drums while wearing a pink wig and shutter-shades, and if that’s not enough to get you to click, I really don’t know what to tell you. Quasi is, of course, Weiss’s duo with ex-husband and longtime collaborator Sam Coomes, and the song is the first single from their forthcoming double album Mole City. The video has the two of them playing in a cramped room together while wearing a succession of increasingly ridiculous costumes — gorilla suit, lucha mask — and you can watch.

Holy Ghost! – “Teenagers In Heat” Lyric Video



Lyric videos have now become an art unto themselves, as some musicians have gone an extra step to create something that engages as well as acts as a service for fans (see: Tegan And Sara’s “I Was A Fool“). For “Teenagers In Heat,” Holy Ghost! have linked up with previous collaborator Ben Fries to craft a lyric video that will act as a benchmark for how it should be done. Playing off the hook — “New York City streets / same beat on repeat / reminding you of me / teenagers in heat” — each line is given its own, warm-filtered shot of NYC with a well-placed sticker to help you sing along.

7/23/2013

Washed Out – “Don’t Give Up” (Official Music Video)



“Don’t Give Up” is a lush ripple of a single from Washed Out’s forthcoming sophomore album Paracosm. And for its video, director Kate Moross is on her Planet Earth shit, using nature-documentary footage so pretty and close-up that it seems almost hallucinatory. Moross zooms in tight on the various body parts of lions, giraffes, zebras, and about a million other animals, lightly tweaking her color palette as the video goes on. The effect is something like taking psychotropic mushrooms and visiting a zoo, which, now that I think about it, sounds like an awesome idea.

Big K.R.I.T. – “Multi” (Official Music Video)



Big K.R.I.T.’s very good recent mixtape King Remembered In Time ends with “Multi,” a swelling struggle-rap built from an M83 sample. And today, that track gets a video, an artfully assembled year-in-the-life montage from director Steve-Ography. The clip follows K.R.I.T. through bus trips, studio sessions, live shows, video shoots, and photo ops, and a few big rap names show up for cameos along the way.

Watch Florence Welch Cover “Get Lucky”



Last Friday night, in a moment of apparent abandon, Florence Welch (of Florence And The Machine) hopped on stage with British cover band Sourberry and did impromptu covers of Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” and the Gossip’s “The Way Of Control.” Of course the performance was captured for digital posterity by a member of the crowd, and has by now “gone viral.” It’s probably the single best thing that will ever happen to the members of Sourberry. For Welch, it’s maybe something less than a career highlight: She appears to be at least slightly drunk, and she obviously doesn’t really know the lyrics to “Get Lucky.” (Who does?) To her credit, she belts it just the same, although it’s not really meant to be belted, so … Hey, she’s having fun up there, right?

The Flaming Lips – “Gates Of Steel” (Devo Cover) Video


Last week, the Flaming Lips shared their video for “Turning Violent,” a song from their new album The Terror. At that same session, they also recorded a video for their cover of Devo’s Freedom Of Choice oldie “Gates Of Steel,” which turns the original song into an inward-looking psych-rock freakout. The cover doesn’t appear on any of their records or anything; they’ve just shared it to promote their forthcoming tour with Tame Impala.

The Internet – “Lincoln” (Feat. Left Brain & Mike G)



Way back in 2011, the Internet, the Odd Future duo of Syd The Kid and Matt Martians, released their Purple Naked Ladies, and they’re just now getting around to releasing a video for the breezy album track “Lincoln.” The song features contributions from two other Odd Future members, rapper Mike G and producer Left Brain, and both of them show up in the video. Until the clip turns into a crime story at the end, it’s maybe the sunniest and most pleasant video in Odd Future history, but, I mean, it does turn into a crime story at the end. Etienne Maurice and Rob Haffey direct.

7/22/2013

Beady Eye – “Shine A Light” (Official Video)



Beady Eye — basically all of Oasis minus Noel Gallagher — released their sophomore album BE earlier this year, and now they’ve got a video for their propulsive single “Shine A Light,” which pulls the rare and commendable move of using the Bo Diddley beat in 2013. In director Charlie Lightening‘s clip, the whole band throws a banquet with some nuns, and Liam Gallagher lies down at the bottom of a pile of naked ladies. (The video never quite edges into NSFW territory, though, so there’s some artful obfuscation of boobs going on.)

Kanye West – “Black Skinhead” Interactive Video

Kanye West - "Black Skinhead" Video

When an early version of Kanye West’s video for the Yeezus banger “Black Skinhead” leaked online, Kanye was not happy about it. But that early video didn’t exactly give a misleading impression; the real “Black Skinhead” video, which went online at midnight last night, is exactly as silly as that early leak implies, though it’s also weirdly impressive. In the Nick Knight-directed video, a suspiciously diesel CGI Kanye, who occasionally morphs into a distorted spiky-faced demon thing, co-stars with a bunch of wolves. It’s dark and intense, but it also looks something like a video game from 15 or 20 years ago. The video is interactive, but the interactivity is limited to slowing the clip way down and taking Instagram screen-shots. Watch it at Kanye’s website.

FIDLAR – “Cocaine” Video (Feat. Nick Offerman) (NSFW)



Nick Offerman was already an internet hero because of his amazing work as Ron Swanson on Parks & Recreation, but once everyone gets a load of this video, he might become something like an internet god. In the music video for FIDLAR’s California punk rager “Cocaine,” we see a destitute Offerman, drunk on Mickey’s, just pissing everywhere: On property, on people, on Los Angeles landmarks, on himself. And yes, you do get to see Ron Swanson’s swan, son. (Did that pun work? I think it worked.) This video is obviously about as NSFW as it could possibly be, but it’s below. Ryan Baxley directs.

Soft Metals – “Tell Me” (Official Video)


“Tell Me,” the recent single from the L.A. duo Soft Metals, is a prettily distant wheels-within-wheels synthpop track. Its new video is a wall-projection of a pretty couple making out furiously for four minutes straight. That means it’s the rare music video that’s both conceptually experimental and sort of sexy. (It’s also just ever so slightly NSFW.) The video repurposes “Hardcore,” a short film from Erin Frost and Shaun Kardinal that was shown at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, which apparently is a thing.

Divine Fits – “Ain’t That The Way” & “Chained To Love” Lyric Videos



Last year, Divine Fits, the Britt Daniel/Dan Boeckner/Sam Brown supergroup, came together and released their strong debut album A Thing Called Divine Fits. And this month, they follow it up with a new 12″ single that features two songs, “Ain’t That The Way” and “Chained To Love,” that they’ve already released on iTunes.  And now they’ve shared lyric videos for both songs, pairing both with movie footage from more innocent times.

7/18/2013

Moby – “A Case For Shame” (Feat. Cold Specks) Official video



Moby is set to release a brand new album this fall called Innocents, featuring a slew of guest appearances from artists like Wayne Coyne, Mark Lanegan, and Damien Jurado. Canadian singer-songwriter and fellow Mute signee Cold Specks joins Moby on a couple tracks including this cinematic cut, “A Case For Shame.” Watch the self-directed clip, which prominently features Moby underwater in his pool in his Los Angeles home.

Coliseum – “Doing Time”



The clip, from director Erik Denno, plays like an arty ’70s road movie, shot in point-of-view form and playing out in three minutes.

7/17/2013

Braids – “In Kind” (Official Music Video)



Braids are slated to release Flourish // Perish later this summer. We’ve already been given a preview of what’s on deck for the follow-up to 2011′s Native Speaker with the “In Kind“/”Amends” 12″ that was released last month. Today they’ve released an expansive video for “In Kind” — even longer than its original six minutes, and chock full of lingering, watercolor-like shots of nature, as well as stark and stoic portraits of singer Raphaelle Standell-Preston. Watch the Angus Borsos-directed clip.

Johnny Marr – “New Town Velocity”


Earlier this year, the former Smiths axemaster Johnny Marr released The Messenger, his first-ever full-on solo album, and the florid rocker “New Town Velocity’ was one of its highlights. In the song’s new black-and-white video, Marr wanders through the stark architecture of the Manchester housing project where he grew up, which is sort of like when Nas heads back to Queensbridge for photo shoots. David Barnes directs.

Summer Camp – “Fresh” Lyric Video



The British indie-pop duo Summer Camp made a big leap last year with the great disco-inflected single “Always,” and maybe they’ll make good on its promise this fall, when they release their self-titled sophomore LP. The album’s first single is the lush, up-tempo “Fresh,” a starry-eyed love song with some nice momentum working for it. Check out the song and its lyric video.

Lightning Dust – “Loaded Gun” (Official Video)



On their new album Fantasy, the Black Mountain side project Lightning Dust move unexpectedly toward synthpop, and the single “Loaded Gun,” in particular, carries the heavy influence of the Knife. The track’s new video, from director Zachary Rothman, also seems Knife-influenced. It’s a stark montage of dark, discomfiting imagery: sweaty and sinewy body parts, lights moving through dark expanses, a fetus clutching an assault rifle. Who even knows what it all means, but it sticks with you.

David Bowie – “Valentine’s Day” Video



Over the course of The Next Day‘s rollout, we’ve seen the extraordinarily well preserved, vital art/rock legend David Bowie make hold up his end of the bargain, from a song and video standpoint: See “Where Are We Now?“‘s film school nostalgia, “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)“‘s Tilda Swinton-informed suburban surrealism, and “The Next Day“‘s A-list actor-fueled, barroom Jesus Christ pose. “Valentine’s Day” is decidedly lower concept (David on a stool with a headless guitar, strumming and singing in a long marble corridor), though it still serves a very important function: A remembrance of David’s wondrous eyeballs. Watch. Because he is watching you.

Pussy Riot – “Like A Red Prison”


Members of feminist protest group Pussy Riot have released a new video for song “Like A Red Prison” for the first time since three were sentenced to serve two years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” The video and song are commentary on the link between Russian president Vladimir Putin’s involvement with the oil industry and features scenes of one member of the group splashing oil onto an image of Igor Sechin, the head of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil firm. Earlier this summer, HBO released a documentary about the collective called A Punk Prayer that focuses on the three members, Nadezhda “Nadia” Tolokonnikova, Maria “Masha” Alyokhina, and Yekaterina “Katerina” Samutsevich who were on trial. Samutsevich was released from prison on appeal, while Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina are still serving their sentences in Russian penal colonies. Other members, like the ones featured in this video, have been attending screenings to do Q&As with the audience and directors.

CocoRosie – “Child Bride” (Official Video)


“Child Bride,” from CocoRosie’s new album Tales Of A Grass Widow, is a deeply discomfiting number, sung from the point of view of a little kid who’s getting ready for her new husband. The gorgeous-looking new video, directed by Emma Freeman, turns the song into something even harder to take, simply by depicting the song’s lyrics in clear visual language. The clip shows us a little girl being wedded off to a much older man in some sort of druidic ritual, and even though it’s pretty literal, it’s way freakier than, for instance, CocoRosie’s characteristically freaky “After The Afterlife” video.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – “If You Didn’t See Me (Then You Weren’t On The Dancefloor)” (Official Video)



Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. give a very winky video treatment to their spring-released single “If You Didn’t See Me (Then You Weren’t On The Dance Floor).” The Detroit duo spend most of the clip running from two cops played by John Ennis and Jay Johnston (of Mr. Show fame), hiding from them via different methods of camouflage. Naturally, the melée concludes in a nightclub, but you’ll have to watch to see if the bands gets caught.

Earl Sweatshirt – “Hive” (Feat. Vince Staples & Casey Veggies)



The Odd Future rapper Earl Sweatshirt is finally getting ready to release Doris, his feverishly anticipated new album, and he’s already shared videos for the early singles “Chum” and “Whoa.” And now there’s another one, for the album track “Hive,” and it’s further evidence that this kid is no fucking joke. The track itself is new, and it’s a monster, with Earl and old buddies Vince Staples and Casey Veggies rapping their respective asses off over a thick, ominous, slow-moving bass-roll and tingly echoing drums. And the video, like the previous one for “Chum,” shows the marks of a fully-developed visual aesthetic, with Earl and friends hanging out in dark houses and alleyways, with masked skate-rat demons shadowing them. “Chum” director Hiro Murai returns. It’s a creepy, compelling vision.

The Flaming Lips – “Turning Violent” (Official Music Video)



Perhaps congratulations are in order. For the first time in what feels like forever, a Flaming Lips video isn’t dominated by visions of naked women crawling through slug guts or whatever. The band’s new video for “Turning Violent,” an ominous churn from their new album The Terror, is primarily a band-performance video, one that captures the band’s members looking hard and intent as they take over an all-white soundstage and lights blast out at appropriate moments. It’s an intense, effective piece of work.

Austra – “Painful Like” Video



Olympia, the excellent new album from Toronto electro-poppers Austra, is dark, obsessive music, so they’re not exactly the first band you’d expect to turn a music video into an excellent ’80s-style B-movie. But that’s exactly what we get with the Exploding Motor Car-directed video for their house-inflected single “Painful Like.” The clip stars bubbling ooze, a glowing egg sac, a gang of masked rollerbladers, and a murderous rubberized beastie who should give you Ghoulies flashbacks if you were lucky enough to spend some of your childhood watching Ghoulies movies. Watch the video and read words about it from Austra leader Katie Stelmanis.

A$AP Ferg – “Shabba” (Feat. A$AP Rocky)



Virtually every A$AP Mob video flips old rap-video cliches, pushing them into luxuriant absurdity, and the video for “Shabba,” the new track from A$AP Ferg and A$AP Rocky, is no exception. If anything, it seems a bit more self-conscious than many of them. The clip has Ferg wearing many different forms of finery, Rocky presiding over a Last Supper tableaux, and cameos from the actual reggae superstar Shabba Ranks and Snoop from The Wire.

7/15/2013

Classixx - "All You're Waiting For" feat. Nancy Whang



Los Angeles production duo Tyler Blake and Michael David, better known as Classixx, have shared the video for their Nancy Whang (formerly of LCD Soundsystem)-featuring Hanging Gardens highlight "All You're Waiting For". The clip, directed by Tim K and produced by Urban Outfitters, stars Whang as she lives the high life on her private boat. She also has a chilly encounter with Blake and David. 

The Weeknd – “Belong To The World”



Last month, we posted video of the Weeknd debuting a new track called “You Belong To The World” live onstage in Toronto. The song, meant for the Weeknd’s forthcoming album Kiss Land, samples the world-annihilating drums of Portishead’s “Machine Gun” (more on that below) and it approaches the hard-pop falsetto paranoia of, say, Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana.” The song’s new eight-minute video stars a black-uniformed Abel Tesfaye, who we see wandering lovestruck through a cold future-world, one in which people are forced to watch expressionist dance pieces. Can you imagine? Horrifying!

Jenny Hval – “Innocence Is Kinky” (NSFW) (Official Music Video)


Jenny Hval is an experimental Norwegian singer and writer who has been playing music for nearly ten years in Oslo. Since 2006, she has released four full-length records; two under the moniker “Rockettothesky” and two under her own name. Hval’s most recent, Innocence is Kinky, was released in the US in May via Rune Grammofon. With her intriguing compositions, Hval sings in a straightforward yet challenging manner about gender and sexuality. (It’s telling that Hval is also a poet and and author.) That sense of provocative thinking comes across in her video for “Innocence Is Kinky,” a *NSFW* visualization that seems to comment on the ways we are socially conditioned to relate with and perceive women’s bodies.

Daughn Gibson – “Kissin On The Blacktop”



Daughn Gibson LP Me Moan, our Tom B. says “Kissin On The Blacktop” is “a rockabilly ramble taken apart and reassembled in a gleaming-white laboratory, like what Dirty Beaches might sound like if that guy was actually interested in convincing large numbers of people to enjoy his music.” (He issues that on-point-alism after a detour in which David Lynch and Chris Isaak’s unlikely yet fruitful ’90s partnership is analyzed, and concluded with Daughn, “who comes off like early-’90s Lynch and Isaak combined into one person, except beamed into 2013, given time to acclimate, and with a voice pitched-down a few octaves…” If you haven’t checked into Me Moan you are know equipped with ample reason, and starting with “Kissin On The Blacktop”‘s official video is a deeply illustrative one. It’s perfectly cast, where every extra and actor looks exactly like its pristine, trash-bar guitar riff sounds, in all its essential curves, cruddy cracks, and chest sweat. (but in a state of almost clinically heightened reality.) (This includes Daughn.)

Dads – “Invisible Blouse”



Dads is a Florida band that includes members of Merchandise. The group’s self-recorded LP Brown on Brown, captured live in a garage, is being reissued at some point by Wharf Cat, a label also home to Great Valley, Blanche Blanche Blanche, and others. In advance of that, the label also released a 7-inch of the first single “Invisible Blouse” and appropriately, Zach Phillips from Blanche Blanche Blanche (“OSR Productions”) made this video for it too. The visuals are intriguing in a bizarre way. The main shot is a cow sitting in a field; a split screen in the corner simultaneously shows grainy footage of the band playing “Live At Club Fuck.” Or something like that.

Passion Pit - "Carry On" (Unexpected Covers)



In a live session for VEVO, Passion Pit frontman Michael Angelakos did a piano cover of fun.’s “Carry On” backed by four female singers. The session seems to be for a series called Unexpected Covers and while Passion Pit’s and fun.’s main demographics do differ, there’s no way the margin of overlap is small. So, this is not Cat Power covering Hot Boys’ “I Feel,” but it’s pretty neat.

Ben Folds Five – “Sky High”



At this point, just about every piece of promotion for the Ben Folds Five reunion album The Sound Of The Life Of The Mind has reinforced Folds’s wacky-guy credibility. But their new video for the ballad “Sky High” finds Folds and friends back on their “Brick” shit, going all soft and emotive. In this one, they lurk unseen in the apartment of a kid about half Folds’s age, helping to tell a sweet little young-folks love story. Darren Jessee directs, and if VH1 still played videos, this would be going directly into rotation.

Hot Sugar – “Leverage” (Feat. Kool A.D., Fat Tony, Lakutis & Nasty Nigel)



The producer Hot Sugar, responsible for tracks like Kitty’s “Barbie Jeep” and “Ay Shawty 3.0,” has lined up an impressive crew of internet-underground dudes to rock over his elegantly decaying beat on “Leverage”: Former Das Racist member Kool A.D., former Das Racist associate Lakutis, Houston prospect Fat Tony, and World’s Fair member Nasty Nigel. And in the song’s new prettily shot new video, from directors Jay Sprogell and Hot Sugar himself, all five of them enjoy a desolate day at deserted Coney Island.

2NE1 – “Falling In Love”



This one isn’t on this week’s best-songs list because the rest of the Stereogum staff is refusing to see greatness as it stares them directly in the face. History will prove them wrong. Here, the closest thing we have to Destiny’s Child today (and that includes the brief reunion of the actual Destiny’s Child) give us a piece of hazy, sun-dazed pop-reggae that absolutely shits on every American pop star’s clumsy attempts at reggae-interpolation. I’ve spent entire afternoons with this song on repeat. It destroys. The video can’t quite equal 2NE1′s unbeatable classic “I Am The Best,” but it’s still a total blast, and it actually conveys the idea that these girls enjoy each other’s company, which no other K-pop group has ever managed to pull off. And the pink wig? The all-gold fast-food cup? The better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be rapping? The all-gold Jeep? The guys playing basketball in tiger-striped designer sweatpants? The synchronized body-roll? The spirit-fingers dance? The all-gold Game Boy? CL’s face? Forget it. It’s over. Kill dem.

7/11/2013

The Julie Ruin – “Oh Come On” (Official Video)



The former Bikini Kill/Le Tigre leader Kathleen Hanna is straight-up, bar-none one of the greatest punk rock performers of all time, and she hasn’t released a new album in almost a decade, since Le Tigre finished their run. So it’s a big deal that Hanna and her new band the Julie Ruin are coming back with the new album Run Fast, especially when the album’s first single is as undeniable and propulsive as “Oh Come On.” The song’s brand-new video, directed by Eric Greenwell, is just the band playing the song in a room. But with Kathleen Hanna on her force-of-nature shit, that’s really all you need.

Blondes – “Elise” (Official Video)



Last month, the analog-electronic duo Blondes dropped an entire surprise full-length album on us. It’s a warm, gummy, floating-in-feelings sort of house music album, and they paired it with visuals from Greg Zifcak. Zifcak also directed their video for “Elise,” the sprawling eight-minute first single, and it looks like what might happen if a busted-ass old TV somehow had a “kaleidoscope” setting.

The xx – “Sunset (Jamie xx Edit)” Video



In the wake of celebrating Oli’s birthday rather sexily down at Bonnaroo, the xx are releasing this promotional video for their “Sunset” self-remix. Here, the Jamie xx “Edit”‘s dusky thump is affixed to archival, Everything Is Terrible-type footage, featuring a dead-serious girl dancing around in a jacket that just happens to have an “x” on its breast. And so the xx continue their impressive streak of never missing a good branding opportunity, libidinously.

7/10/2013

Yo La Tengo – “Ohm” (Official Video)



“Ohm,” the sighing drone that opens Yo La Tengo’s excellent new album Fade, is one hell of a song, and when I saw them earlier this year, they played two different versions of it in the same show. The song’s new video is a fantastical animated affair, one that stars various clones of band members, a tentacled VW bug, a way-too-complicated mathematical equation, and, I’m pretty sure, the cigar-chomping cartoon baby from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Lil Bush creator Donick Cary directed the video.

Lindstrøm – “Vōs-sākō-rv” Video



From Norwegian space-disco dance producer Lindstrøm’s 2012 LP Smalhans comes “Vōs-sākō-rv,” and a video by filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, who captures two gangly, ponytailed, Nordic swimmer-teens in the act of talking, dancing, spitting, and listening to Lindstrøm by a pool. There’s some dialogue that proceeds the teens’ revelry though it’s lost in translation — if you have Norwegian language skills, by all means, let us know.

Sandy (Short Film)



Joseph Mann’s perversely cute (and NSFW) stop-action short, “Sandy.”

Travis - "Moving"



London-based Tom Wrigglesworth and Matt Robinson, aka Wriggles & Robins, create this lovely in-camera music video for Travis’s Moving. On a chilly chilly set, the band’s breath reveals animations within a projector beams.

My favorite part? The simple staircase where it’s hard to tell if the dimensionality is in the animation or an ode to Anthony McCall‘s volumetric light.

The video is based on a concept explored in Wriggles & Robins’ short film, Love is in the Air. There’s nothing quite like real light interacting with fluid dynamics to remind you the real world is magic.

Gesaffelstein - "Pursuit" NSFW (Official video)



[NSFW] Fleur & Manu direct an ominous music video for Gesaffelstein powered by dolly shots through surreal vignettes.

7/09/2013

Julia Holter – “In The Green Wild” (Official Video)



Julia Holter built her name on ethereal, miasmic bedroom-pop music, so her new song “In The Green Wild” is something of an unexpected left turn: an idiosyncratic jazzy thing with fleet, off-kilter vocal delivery and a few moments that remind me of a more sedate tUnE-yArDs. The clip comes paired with a video, from director Yelena Zhelezov, that casts Holter and friends as old-timey theatre types. 

David Byrne & Jherek Bischoff - "Eyes" (Official Music Video)



Earlier this year, composer and member of Amanda Palmer’s Grand Theft Orchestra Jherek Bischoff released a massive orchestral album Composed, featuring guest appearances from David Byrne, Tropicalía luminary Caetano Veloso, and others. Byrne’s cut, “Eyes” is a sweeping strings soundscape punctuated with a modern take on 1950s pop. The video is filled with different closeups at Byrne’s face, as well as an orchestra.

Speedy Ortiz – “Tiger Tank”



Official video for Speedy Ortiz's "Tiger Tank", the first single off their debut full-length "Major Arcana".

Directed by Matthew Caron http://yrfriendmatthew.com
Shot by Destiny Mata and Matthew Caron
Edited by D.V. Caputo
Executive Produced by Matt Altieri
Shanna MacLasco asTiger Girl
Ethan Marsh as The Ref

Kanye West – “Black Skinhead” Video

Titus Andronicus – “Still Life With Hot Deuce And Silver Platter” (Official Video)



Local Business, the album that Titus Andronicus released last year, was a bit of a retrenchment, a return to the no-frills dude-rock that the band had been making before the all-out conceptual grandeur of The Monitor. It wasn’t The Monitor, so people got disappointed. But it remains a pretty kickass rock record, and the new video for the six-minute throwdown “Still Life With Hot Deuce And Silver Platter” is a nice reminder that these guys are complete beasts even when they aim lower. Director Bryan Schlam has given them a sweaty and physical performance video, filming them at Shea Stadium, the Brooklyn DIY venue that members of the band helped to found. There’s gimmickry — cameras affixed to guitars and mics, a fake-VHS tape-glitch in the middle — but the video mostly exists to convey how much fun a Titus live show can be, and it does its job admirably.

Watch Beck, Jarvis Cocker, Franz Ferdinand Perform At London Song Reader Event

In 2012 Beck released an album of sheet music, Song Reader. Earlier this week, on July 4, Beck played songs from this album with a full band in London at The Barbican. It was Beck’s first time playing songs from this album with a full band, and he was joined by a cast of collaborators including Jarvis Cocker, Franz Ferdinand, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Beth Orton, Conor J O’Brien of Villagers, the Staves, Guillemots, and various others.

Beck and Jarvis Cocker – “Why Did You Make Me Care?”

7/08/2013

Franz Ferdinand – “Right Action” Video



Streamlined Scottish new wave kings Franz Ferdinand are coming back with their new LP Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, their first album in four years. The former track is a slashing, efficient singalong jam, and its new video reunites the band with Jonas Odell, the man who directed their kinda-iconic “Take Me Out” video. The clip is made up to look like a geometrically inclined early-’60s movie poster or opening-credits sequence — think Charade — and it’s the sort of thing that makes an already-fun song just slightly more fun.

The Underachievers – “The Proclamation”



Brooklyn rappers Issa Dash and Ak, a/k/a The Underachievers, have released a video for a new single, “The Proclamation,” shot mostly around Coney Island and directed by YASHANA.

The Lonely Island – “We Need Love” Video



The Lonely Island have a new video for “We Need Love,” a track from their recently released Wack Album.

Justin Timberlake – “Tunnel Vision” Video (NSFW)


The comparisons between Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke essentially haven’t ceased since Thicke released his falsetto-laden, guitar&B track “Lost Without U.” However, it was usually Timberlake being exalted as the better of the two until this year, due to the crossover appeal of Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and its video filled with topless women. Timberlake is now being called out as the copycat via his video for “Tunnel Vision,” a boobs-party unto itself. This clip does have a few other subtle similarities, too, including Timberlake dancing in front of a minimal, white background and bold typography displaying the name of the song. Is this plagiarism, a knowing-nod, or a coincidence?

Executive Producer: Jeff Nicholas
Produced by Jonathan Craven and Nathan Scherrer
Directed by Jonathan Craven, Simon McLoughlin and Jeff Nicholas for The Uprising Creative (http://theuprisingcreative.com)
Director Of Photography: Sing Howe Yam
Editor: Jacqueline London

7/03/2013

Ghost B.C. - "Monstrance Clock" (Official Video)



The flamboyant Swedish horror-metal goofs Ghost B.C. — or, if you’re outside the litigious U.S., just plain Ghost — released their Infestissumam album earlier this year, and they made a great little ’70s-style supernatural thriller out of their “Year Zero” video. But the band’s members are already such absurd characters that they don’t have to make a threatrical video; they can just get someone to point cameras at their live show. That’s what they do with their video for the Infestissumam track “Monstrance Clock,” filming shows in New York and L.A. and giving us priceless image of a skull-faced Satanic pope figure stalking the tiled hallways of a nightlcub backstage area. Rob Semmer directs.

Roc Marciano – “Ruff Town” (Feat. Cormega)


Last year, the great Long Island rapper/producer Roc Marciano released Reloaded, an album of blunted and fractured boom-bap that ranked as one of 2012′s great under-the-radar rap albums. Roc’s got a new album coming out soon, with the hilarious title Marci Beaucoup, and the horn-drenched track “Ruff Town” unites him with the Queensbridge veteran Cormega, whose cerebral, word-drunk style makes him an important Roc influence. The “Ruff Town” video, from director Deviant, starts out as your usual low-stakes underground rap video, but it turns violent toward the end.

Lulu James – “Step By Step” Video



Last week, one of our favorite songs was “Step By Step,” the lush but hard-pounding diva-house anthem from the Tanzanian-born, UK-based singer Lulu James. The song’s brand-new video is top-shelf dance-hedonism absurdity, with James playing a priestess in a tribal disco cathedral, with lasers shooting everywhere and near-naked dudes dancing all around her.

Jamie Lidell – “Big Love”



When a white R&B singer makes a video where he’s the only white person around, it’s easy to get suspicious about motives. But the glitch-soul pioneer Jamie Lidell, who released a self-titled album earlier this year, seems concerned with things other than just looking cool. In his “Big Love” clip, directed by Michael Carter, Lidell co-stars with Cincinnati’s QKidz DanceTeam, who would absolutely steal the video away from Lidell even if he wasn’t just lip-syncing on a highway overpass. These kids are a total joy to watch, and the video mostly centers on their practices and performances, not on Lidell.

Dan Deacon - “USA” Suite


Last year, Dan Deacon released his album America, and its centerpiece was an expansive, experimental four-song suite called “USA.” And so it makes sense, tomorrow being the Fourth of July and all, that Deacon has chosen this moment to share his huge, sweeping 22-minute video for the entire suite. Director Dave Hughes has made an oddly patriotic work that pulls in all sorts of American iconography: Mountains, deserts, cities, satellites, cowboy-movie images — all of it turned glitchy and psychedelic.

7/02/2013

Phoenix – “Trying To Be Cool” (Official Video)



“Trying To Be Cool” is the second single from Phoenix’s new album Bankrupt!, and its new video, helmed by the directing team CANADA and produced by the Creators Project, is a total goofball triumph. It starts out as a fairly normal live-in-studio club, but then things keep happening: A baboon sits in an office chair, bubbles blow past, Thomas Mars nonchalantly shows off apparently-ridiculous ping-pong skills. And then things escalate. Nothing has anything to do with anything else, but the end result is a giddy blast of non-sequitur energy.

Janelle Monáe – “Dance Apocalyptic” (Official Video)



With a cursory glance of Janelle Monáe’s new music video for “Dance Apocalyptic” you might just be surprised by how she has let her hair down, but look a little more and you’ll realize just how wonderfully strange the Wendy Morgan-directed video ends up being. Monáe becomes another one of her many characters and the introduction to “The Electric Lady” via a ’60s variety shows works as a funny parody and a nice tribute to Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” Then there’s the baffling, absurd, and hilarious short film treatment by Chuck Lightning for the video that creates backstories and adds characters (including others played by Monáe). It just gets stranger – midway through when the video abruptly cuts to a newscaster (also played by Monáe) reporting on the apocalypse/fighting off a zombie before cutting back with no explanation, and I’m pretty sure that was Dr. Zaius who showed up for a brief moment in the static between feeds. Finally there’s “Dance Apocalyptic” itself, a song that takes the end of the world and makes it sound like as weightless and carefree as Monáe’s dance moves. It’s a hell of a lot of fun and a hell of a lot of weird

Mount Kimbie – “You Took Your Time”


King Krule Joins the South London Drifters on a Journey Into the Edgelands

"Where should we escape when we have no place to go?” muses Swedish director Marcus Söderlund of his new video to introspective electronic duo Mount Kimbie’s sweeping single, “You Took Your Time,” filmed on location just outside London in the marshy, urban landscape of Tilbury, Essex. “In a more equal society, the suburbs wouldn’t be places you have to leave.” The director is best known for his iconic monochrome video to The xx’s, “VCR.” “I love color. But I also find it really calming to work in black and white, it’s like your senses becomes sharper once you desaturate.” The song features the hostile vocal flow of 23-year-old rapper, King Krule aka Archie Marshall, and is taken from Warp Records-released Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, Mount Kimbie’s follow-up to the acclaimed debut Crooks & Lovers.

Hodgy Beats - "Alone"



A month ago, Hodgy Beats, an Odd Future rapper and one half of the duo MellowHype, released his Untitled 2 EP. And now he’s made a video, one that he co-directed with Ian Flanagan, for “Alone,” the EP’s opening track. It’s a hallucinatory affair, with Hodgy trapped in a room where everything appears to be fake, or buried up to his neck on a beach.

Main Attrakionz – “Summa Time”



The pioneering Bay Area cloud-rap duo Main Attrakionz were among the first rappers to work with Clams Casino, and their forthcoming album 808s & Dark Grapes III will unite them with another hazy up-and-coming beatmakers: Friendzone, who handles all the production on the record. First single “Summa Time” makes that sound like a very, very good idea. It’s a gorgeously washed-out rap track, and its new Smash House Collective-directed video, in which the duo and their friends hang out in a graffiti-strewn and burnt-out scrapyard, is appropriately warm and pleasant.

7/01/2013

Ciara – “I’m Out” (Feat. Nicki Minaj) (Official Music Video)



When Ciara makes her version of an A$AP Rocky video, she does it with gleaming ’90s spaceship aesthetics and Nicki Minaj and synchronized popping, which means she has vastly improved on the A$AP Rocky video model. Ci’s video for her Nicki collab “I’m Out” is the second clip from the robo-R&B star’s forthcoming self-titled album, following her Future collab “Body Party,” and it is an almost definite lock for Friday’s Straight To Video column. Hannah Lux Davis directs.

Julian Lynch - "North Line" (Official Music Video)



Atmospheric pop-experimentalist Julian Lynch has been known to put out some … experimental music videos (here’s looking at you, “decrepit stuffed rabbit doll”). His latest, though, seems to be an experiment in cuteness. In the clip for “Northside,” a lazy, flowering acoustic arrangement from Lynch’s latest album Lines, various puppies hang their heads mystically out of a car window: as they cruise slowly through a summery town, their distant gazes highlight both the simplicity and the melancholy of suburban living. My favorite is the fuzzy brown guy at 1:03.

Solar Year – “Global Girlfriend” (Official Music Video)



Montreal’s Solar Year released their debut record, Waverly, last week on Ceremony/Splendour. Along with the album, the duo also released a new video for their track “Global Girlfriend,” a collaboration with director Allie Avital Tsypin.

Nine Inch Nails – “Came Back Haunted” Video (Dir. David Lynch)



WARNING: This video has been identified by Epilepsy Action to potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy. Viewer discretion is advised

Nine Inch Nails made their triumphant return last month with “Came Back Haunted,” a throwback to their signature industrial-pop for their new album Hesitation Marks. David Lynch was enlisted to direct the clip and he delivered something akin to his shorts and the large non-sequitur parts of the narrative that happen in almost every one of his feature films. Watch the video, but it has been marked to potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy, so please do right by yourself.

Lemuria – “Scienceless”



Lemuria’s new record The Distance Is So Big is out now on Bridge Nine Records. Previously we heard the first single, “Brilliant Dancer.” Now the band have a new video for “Scienceless.”

Joey Bada$$ – “95 Til Infinity” (Official Music Video)



Next week, the teenage Brooklyn rapper Joey Bada$$ will release his new mixtape Summer Knights, his first since 1999 put him on the map last year. And the beautifully shot new video for the raspy, floaty mixtape track “95 Til Infinity,” directed by Joey himself, we see Joey ambling across Brooklyn and Manhattan, sometimes wearing a shirt that appears to have to cover of Big Black’s Songs About Fucking on it.

Big Boi – “The Thickets” (Feat. Sleepy Brown)



Big Boi continues to ride out last year’s Vicious Lies And Dangerous Rumors with a video for album cut “The Thickets” featuring his “The Way You Move”-collaborator Sleepy Brown. The video is a bit of a head-scratcher, featuring Big Boi trudging through crab-fishing country on crutches while Sleepy (who has a few sporadic crutch scenes, too) croons the hook in front of an awesomely cheesy fireworks backdrop.

Pissed Jeans – “Romanticize Me” (Official Music Video)


“When I was done, it would either be because I had won the Olympics 19 times and broken all possible world records. I would have reached the pinnacle of sports fame, driving a different exotic car every day of the week and buying small countries with my 900 bazillion dollars. Or, I’d walk into the rink one day and there would be a giant neon sign reading: ‘Braden Overett’s Retiring Today!’ … Guess what. None of that happened.”

— Braden Overett (pictured above)

No one should expect figure skating and frantic noise rock to blend well, but just look at that quote up above. It’s from Braden Overett’s open letter announcing his retirement from ice skating, and it channels the darkly funny and cynical spirit of Pissed Jeans perfectly. In a wonderful new Joe Stakun-directed music video for the Honeys highlight “Romanticize Me,” Overett plays an ice rink janitor who dreams of figure skating. Bookended by dull, music-less sequences of him cleaning, eating, Zamboni … ing?, he channels the band’s obsessions with failure and mundanity (See: “Spent”). In between those moments though is a jaw-dropping performance by Overett in a ridiculous sparkly outfit. The music and his performance are aggressive, just a little silly, and when you understand the context, sort of sad, too. But I just keep thinking back to that quote and how the band, the main character, and Overett himself clearly see the lack of control when failure hits, promptly say, “Fuck it,” and skate on. Check the video out below, and tell me: I can’t be the only one that wants to see something like this happen at the Olympics, right?.

M.I.A. – “Bring The Noize” Video (Matangi Gold Edition)



At the start of the week, M.I.A. released a video for Matangi lead single “Bring The Noize.” Here is the Matangi Gold Edition, which is the same clip presented with a gold leaf-like effect on top of it. I miss the purple hair, Maya, but this looks pretty cool.

Smith Westerns – “Idol”


Right now, thanks to their swoony third LP Soft Will, Chicago glamsters Smith Westerns are our reigning Album Of The Week champs. They’ve already made a video for “Varsity,” maybe the best song on the album. But now they’ve got another one, for another album highlight. “Idol,” which pulls off the neat trick of being jauntily bummed-out, now soundtracks a fuzzy VHS-style clip from director Sandy Kim. In the clip, all three Smith Westerns sit, bored and self-absorbed, while a party rages around them.

Stars – “Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Give It”


Earlier this year, RuPaul’s crossover hit “Supermodel” turned 20 and because of his trailblazing — including his extremely addictive reality competition RuPaul’s Drag Race — drag queens are nearly ubiquitous. A whole grip are featured in Stars’ video for “Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Give It” — a collection of primp-and-prep scenes leading up to a houseparty with its own runway. For my money, the guys and gals in the clip could study up a bit with Paris Is Burning but I need suicide drops and I need them extra severe. But this is about love, right? And the video is beaming with that.