11/28/2013

Eminem - "Rap God" (Explicit) Official Video



The video for “Rap God,” the honestly impressive six-minute fast-rap excessive from Eminem’s not-great new album The Marshall Mathers LP 2, has landed, and it’s a weird one. For whatever reason, Em and director Rich Lee have based the video on Max Headroom, the jittery CGI TV host who seemed to signify the ’80s even as the ’80s were actually happening. The video also casts Em as a berserk rap robot, a levitating cypher demon, a walking-on-water deity, and Pinhead from Hellraiser.

Pitbull ft. Ke$ha - "Timber" (Official Video)



Music video by Pitbull feat. Ke$ha performing Timber. (C) 2013 RCA Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment

Popstrangers – “Rats In The Palm Trees” Video



New Zealand band Popstrangers moved to London this year after releasing their album Antipodes and marked the occasion with the new single “Rats In The Palm Trees,” that also came with a woozy, B-side called “Fortuna.” Now they have a video for “Rats” which acts very much like a travelogue of their new home, moving at the speedy pace that only comes with being in a new city.

Major Lazer ft. Laidback Luke & Ms. Dynamite - "Sweat" (Official Video)


“Sweat,” a pounding collaboration with the Dutch producer Laidback Luke and the British rapper Ms. Dynamite, was one of the increasingly few tracks on Major Lazer’s sophomore album Free The Universe that didn’t have a music video, and that changes today. The visually striking clip, from director Ryan Staake, consists almost entirely of painted people dancing under black lights. If you were feeling ungenerous, you could accuse the video of reveling the the fetishization of black bodies.

11/27/2013

Butch Walker - "Coming Home" (Official Video)



Official video for "Coming Home" off the Peachtree Battle EP. Directed by Olivier Agostini 

Superchunk – “Void” Official Video (Feat. Jon Glaser & Jon Benjamin)



As punk lifers with decades in the game, Superchunk are good and familiar with every possible old-guy-in-the-club scenario, and their new video for “Void,” a song from their truly great 2013 album I Hate Music, features a whole lot of them. Director Scott Jacobson has assembled a cast that includes every possible alt-comedy fixture named Jon; Glaser, Benjamin, and Superchunk drummer Wurster are all present and accounted for. The action all unfolds at the Brooklyn DIY venue Shea Stadium, and bands like Ava Luna and Lost Boy make appearances. I laughed right out loud more than once, and then I felt uncomfortable, and then I got happy.

Milosh - “This Time” (Official Video)



The Rhye singer Michael Milosh has been making solo records for longer than he’s been in Rhye, and he put together his newest, the just-out-today Jetlag, with the help of his wife, actress Alexa Nikolas. In Milosh’s great “Slow Down” video, Nikolas’s face is the only thing you see onscreen. And she’s also a huge part of his new video for the album closer “This Time,” which follows the couple as they travel around the world and do the sort of extremely goofy shut-out-the-world stuff that couples do. Our own Chris DeVille recently interviewed Milosh, and he had this to say about the video:
We brought a camera with us and shot all around the world and I wanted to make a video hopefully to inspire some people to go travel and do some beautiful things. We filmed each other joking around in these beautiful places. We found this pond on top of a mountain and it’s not very likely that someone would know it’s there, but I would love to talk about those kind of things and hopefully inspire people to go out there and see some cool things.

Sky Ferreira - “Night Time, My Time” (NSFW) Official Video



Sky Ferreira’s great album Night Time, My Time has been out for a few weeks, and now there’s finally some indication that her label is giving it something resembling a promotional push. Last night, she was on Letterman. And now, she’s got a possibly-NSFW new video for the burning, droning, noise-haunted title track. In director Grant Singer’s clip, she wears colored wigs, lingerie, and those same intense and defiant eyes she has in the album cover. 

The Underachievers – “Leopard Shepherd” Video



Brooklyn underground rap duo the Underachievers have landed in Mixtape Of The Week twice this year: First for the stoned and expansive Indigoism, and then for the harder and more concrete The Lords Of Flatbush. Now they’ve got a new video for the spacey Indigoism track “Leopard Shepherd,” which directors Flow Motion filmed in Paris. In the clip, the duo gets as touristy as possible, rapping at only the most obvious locations, and somehow it works. More rappers should tape rap-video segments at Versailles; it just makes sense. Also, I think it’s adorable how the non-rapping half of the group will absentmindedly rap along with whoever’s turn it is to rap.

11/26/2013

The Killers - “Just Another Girl” Video (Feat. Dianna Agron)



The Killers just released their career-spanning best-of Direct Hits, and they included two new songs on the album. One of those songs, the M83 collab “Shot At The Night,” already had a glitzy music video with a kinda-famous actress in it. And now the second new one, the surging “Just Another Girl,” has Glee actress Dianna Agron starring as different incarnations of Killers frontman Brandon Flowers throughout the band’s history. But then the actual Flowers is in it, too. It’s confusing.

Factory Floor - "Turn it Up" (Official Video)



The great British trio Factory Floor, who weld house-music sonics to postpunk processes, have just unveiled their video for “Turn It Up,” one of the singles from their self-titled album. And true to form for this band, it’s non-representational arty abstraction: Digitally noisy colors and wave-forms that pulsate along with the track. This time around, though, you can occasionally make out something as concrete as a hi-hat. Progress!

Mike WiLL Made-It – “Faded” Video (Feat. Future)



ATL superproducer Mike WiLL Made-It’s #MikeWiLLBeenTriLL mixtape is coming next month, and now we’ve got another great preview to accompany the Migos/Wiz Khalifa collab “Whippin A Brick.” The second single, “Faded,” features Future, arguably Mike’s most potent collaborator, splattering a blockbuster production with syllables. Future’s sounding more like a conventional rapper here than the morbidly gurgling android he sometimes impersonates, but on balance it still bangs. The video, directed by Mike and shot/edited by Max Hliva.

Isaiah Rashad – “Ronnie Drake” (Feat. SZA) Video


Top Dawg Entertainment was, and is, the label of Kendrick Lamar and his Black Hippy crew. But the label has slowly branched out in the past year, signing the promising Tennessee rapper Isaiah Rashad and the airy R&B singer SZA. Both new signings link up on the extremely pleasant new track “Ronnie Drake.” And in the track’s striking, evocative new black-and-white video, Rashad and SZA hang around Rashad’s Chattanooga hometown. We see Rashad spending a lot of time around babies and broken-down cars, and I can relate, on both counts. Fredo Tovar and Scott Fleishman direct.

Busta Rhymes - “Thank You” Video (Feat. Q-Tip, Kanye West & Lil Wayne)



When Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip teamed up on the soulful fast-rap clinic “Thank You” earlier this month, both of them sounded better than they have in years. And so it’s awesome that the two are teaming up on a collaborative mixtape called The Abstract & The Dragon next month. “Thank You” had Lil Wayne and Kanye West doing hypeman duties, and both of them, as well as some notable cameo types (did I see Delonte West in there?) are in the brand-new “Thank You” video. Visually, it’s mostly girls-and-sparkly-bottles rap boilerplate, but the considerable charisma of the principal figures is plenty enough to make it worth your time. Also, Busta appears to be growing his braids back, which can only be a good thing.

James Franco & Seth Rogen - “Bound 3" (Recreate Kanye’s “Bound 2″ Video)



Last week, Kanye West released his perfectly absurd video for the great Yeezus closer “Bound 2,” in which he an a naked Kim Kardashian made out on an obviously greenscreened motorcycle. You probably did not need any help to realize how ridiculous this video was. But if you did, Seth Rogen and James Franco are here to think. The two made a shot-for-shot remake of that video, with Franco playing Kanye and Rogen playing Kim, right down to the orgasmic facial expressions. It is both funny and hard to watch, and you can experience it below.

Watch Eddie Vedder Cover The Velvet Underground’s “After Hours” In L.A.



During last night’s Pearl Jam show at the L.A. Memorial Sports Arena, Eddie Vedder took a break from the band’s usual setlist to pay tribute to Lou Reed. Vedder crooned the Velvet Underground’s “After Hours” with his usual huskiness to a loudly enthusiastic audience. He briefly introduced the song saying, “I just want to let him know we’re thinking about him … I can’t tell you how much I miss the guy.” And with a final imparting lesson, “Miss ’em while they’re still here,” Vedder broke into the classic first line, “If you close the door …” Check out the video of Vedder’s cover.

Icona Pop - “Just Another Night” (Official Video)



“Just Another Night” follows Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo through the streets of Paris, hopping between parties and romantic flings. It’s all captured exquisitely in black and white by director Marc Klasfeld.

Nina Persson - “Animal Heart” (Official Video)



Nina Persson, probably best known as the lead singer for ’90s Swedish pop band the Cardigans, is about to release her first solo album, Animal Heart, on Lojinx Records, next February. In the past few years Persson has performed a few reunion shows with the Cardigans, as well as releasing two albums with side project A Camp. Now she’s released a music video for the single and title track of her solo bow, “Animal Heart.” The video follows Persson as she goes through a seemingly “normal” day, but as if on a film set; while she descends the steps of a Brooklyn-esque brownstone and fetches milk from the nearby market, “crew” members undress and redress her, a dance posse trails behind, and people carry backdrops to match the scenes in her lyrics. In her familiar pop soprano she cries “come be my man, babe hang on to me” over a twinkling synth.

After The Smoke – “Moments” Video



A couple weeks ago we saw the video for “Wallstreet,” an expertly smoky hip-hop loop from After The Smoke’s upcoming Microwaves project. Today comes an appropriately hallucinatory clip for the reality-bending R&B-informed track “Moments.” ATS mastermind Rob Coin is obviously well-versed in the study of hip-hop’s dusty, groovy underbelly; if the last song was reminiscent of DJ Shadow, this one calls to mind OutKast’s deep funk slow jams and Madlib & MF Doom’s richly twisted Madvillainy LP. Coin also directs After The Smoke’s videos, and his clip for “Moments” is disorienting and bloody. Directed by Shomi Patwary Edited by Rob Coin

Bruce Springsteen – “High Hopes” Video



Music video by Bruce Springsteen performing High Hopes. (C) 2013 Bruce Springsteen

11/25/2013

Kings Of Leon - “Beautiful War” (Official Video)



If any rock band in 2013 seems poised to make a piece of epically silly “November Rain”-style music-video ridiculousness, it’s probably Kings Of Leon. And their video for the Mechanical Bull ballad “Beautiful War,” with its seven-minute runtime and its themes of grand personal tragedy, certainly seems to be aiming for that. The “Beautiful War” video ultimately doesn’t quite have that cheesily hamfisted conviction, but it does have love triangles and fisticuffs and redemption-through-bullriding, so it’s definitely something to behold.

Arcade Fire - "Afterlife" (Official Video)

 

The members of Arcade Fire don’t appear in their brand-new video for the powerful Reflektor track “Afterlife,” and nobody in the clip adheres to the band’s live-show dress code. Instead, the great music-video director Emily Kai Bock starts things off with a tense Spanish dinner-table conversation, then goes deep into the dreams and longings of all the people involved. Produced by the Creators Project, it’s an empathetic and visually ravishing piece of work — to my mind, a vast improvement over the band’s “Reflektor” video, if not the version of “Afterlife” that Spike Jonze staged at the YouTube Music Awards.

U2 - “Ordinary Love” Lyric Video (OST Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom)



“Ordinary Love” is U2′s contribution to Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, the forthcoming Nelson Mandela biopic. We heard a few pieces of the sweeping, emotive, Danger Mouse-produced song in the movie’s trailer, but now U2 has shared the entire thing in the form of a lyric video.

Rustie – “Boatsss” Video



We haven’t gotten too much stuff from Rustie this year in terms of quantity, but the quality has been exquisite. There’s was “Slasherr” at the beginning of the year, and plus there were his contributions to Danny Brown’s Old where he drenched the second half of it in that good old purple sound. Now he’s got a new one titled “Boatsss,” which will be released for the double disc BOATS compilation which is intended to help bring aid to South East Indian children via the Everything Is New project. It also features new tracks by Four Tet, Gang Gang Dance, Dan Deacon, MatthewDavid, YACHT.

Broken Bells - “Holding On For Life” Video (Feat. Kate Mara & Anton Yelchin)



Broken Bells, the duo of Danger Mouse and Shins frontman James Mercer, return early next year with their sophomore album After The Disco, and they’ve brought out some big guns in the short-film video for their first single “Holding On For Life,” the second part of a story that started below. The clip stars Kate Mara (Zoe Barnes on House Of Cards!) and Anton Yelchin (Chekov in the new Star Trek movies!), and it picks up where the last one left off. This time, Yelchin and Mara are a couple with a problem: They’re at a party on a glowing orb-shaped spaceship, and their reality keeps bending in on itself. You’d think Yelchin would be a little more used to the distorting effects of space travel after all his time on the Enterprise, but no. Jacob Gentry, who made the pretty good zombie movie The Signal, directed the video, Danger Mouse wrote the story, and the Creators Project produced it.

Broken Bells – After The Disco Short Film Part One: Angel And The Fool

Last month Broken Bells, the team of Danger Mouse and Shins frontman James Mercer, teased their sophomore LP After The Disco with a panoramic video. Now comes one in a normal shape, the first chapter of an After The Disco short film penned by Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse), starring Anton Yelchin and Kara Mara, directed by Jacob Gentry, and produced by the Creators Project. The clip begins with Yelchin’s character roaming what looks like the same desert from the teaser video, only to discover Mara’s character, a lady in a spacesuit regaining consciousness. Watch it below, and look out for more installments soon.



The Pastels – “Kicking Leaves” (Official Video)



This shouldn’t be a surprise given their name, but the recently revived Scottish indie-poppers the Pastels have a way with visuals. Rather than the titular medium, though, their videos tend toward collage. They already gave us one great clip for comeback single “Check My Heart,” and here’s another for Slow Summits track “Kicking Leaves.” This one is a lot more impressionistic, with rich swaths of color splattered across grainy footage. Matched with Katrina Mitchell’s breathy whisper and a heartstring-tugging string arrangement, it’s pretty heavenly all-around, especially if you’re a sucker for twee balladry along the lines of Belle & Sebastian’s “Fox In The Snow.” See for yourself.

11/21/2013

Katy Perry - "Unconditionally" (Official Video)


Official video for Katy Perry's "Unconditionally" directed by Brent Bonacorso and produced by Thom Fennessey, Danny Lockwood & Jess Bell; DP: Magdalena Gorka

ASG - “Scrappy’s Trip” Official Video



The excellent North Carolina band ASG released their fourth album, Blood Drive, back in May. 
Frontman Jason Shi’s muscular, dynamic voice drives the band’s downtuned riffing, and [Blood Drive] features a terrific abundance of both. Blood Drive is a heavy album, no question, but it’s primarily a catchy album, full of resin-sticky summertime metal. There’s not a bad song on the thing, and it surges from doom-y melancholy to sludge-y aggression, from psychedelia to rawk. It comes from a place not far from the ones that produced three of last year’s best metal albums, in fact: Baroness’s Yellow & Green, Torche’s Harmonicraft, and Pallbearer’s Sorrow & Extinction. That’s high praise, to be sure, but I think Blood Drive earns it.
Blood Drive was roundly well received, although it has yet to reach the level of prominence achieved by the aforementioned albums. That’s a shame, because listening to it today, the thing still sounds great — along with the metal acts referenced above, I can hear strains of Band Of Horses, Jane’s Addiction, Black Mountain, and Corrosion Of Conformity in these songs. There are a lot of bands trying to do this particular thing, and ASG do it better than almost all of them. Anyway, the band has released a video for Blood Drive track “Scrappy’s Trip.” It’s a pretty straightforward b&w performance clip, but it reminds me — and reminds me to remind you — to bump Blood Drive back into regular rotation this week. (Fun fact: In the video, guitarist Jonah Citty is wearing a shirt from the Brooklyn bar St. Vitus, which is owned by friends of mine.) It makes an ASG gig look like a pretty damned good time, too. On that note, the band is playing a free show on Dec. 4 at the Satellite in Los Angeles, and if you’re in LA, you should go. Cop tix here.

11/20/2013

The Dodos - “Transformer” Official Video



The San Francisco-based band the Dodos released their fifth full-length album Carrier back in August, and we saw their video for the single “Confidence” soon after. Similar to “Confidence,” the video for “Transformer” (drawn and directed by Spencer Hicks) has a goofy introduction — it begins as a sort-of charming animated short about a lonely man in his underwear who sits at the kitchen table picking his nose while his cross-eyed dog hangs out in the yard. Fast-forward two minutes in, and umbrella-headed invaders have taken over the cabin, the lonely man has been shot, and his dog is dead. Oh, and the invaders are munching on what appears to be a ball of the lonely man’s snot while sipping on mugs of foamy beer. Watch the animated video.

Alex Bleeker & The Freaks - “Step Right Up” (Official Music Video)



When he’s not working in his main band, Real Estate, Alex Bleeker is working with his other project Alex Bleeker & The Freaks. He put out a very feel-good record earlier this year called How Far Away and now he’s got a feel-good video for the track “Step Right Up.” It simply follows Bleeker in a goofy hat as he wanders through a festival singing to the camera, posing with folks, receiving high fives, and just being an all-around charismatic dude. Watch, it will make you smile.

11/19/2013

Pixies – “What Goes Boom” Video



“What Goes Boom” was among the new post-Kim Pixies songs on the recently released EP-1, and the song’s title accurately capture’s the explosive quality of the track itself. It even more aptly describes the accompanying video, which follows drummer Joey Santiago on a long, lonely trek through the desert … only to blow the poor guy to smithereens.

Bob Dylan – “Like A Rolling Stone” Interactive Video

http://video.bobdylan.com/desktop.html
 Click image or visit Video Bob Dylan 

It’s a weird time for Bob Dylan to release an interactive video for his generation-defining 1965 song “Like A Rolling Stone,” but Dylan did just release the massive 47-disc box set The Complete Album Collection Volume 1, so why the hell not. The video, a fascinating piece of work, aims to replicate the act of flipping through channels, with a bit of a twist. There are 16 packages, but every time you flip to a new one, the people onscreen are lip-syncing the “Like A Rolling Stone” lyrics. They’re going about what would ordinarily be their regular televised business; they’re just doing it while lip-syncing Dylan lyrics. Flipping through, you’ll find Drew Carey, the Pawn Stars, Danny Brown, Marc Maron, the Property Brothers, and Dylan himself in archival footage, among various others. It’s a bizarrely enjoyable experience, and you can take part here.

Sleepy Sun – “The Lane” (Official Video)



Director Ron Robinson’s clip reminds me of that flight simulator at Epcot Center, only with trips to outer space and lots of psychedelic triangles.

Franz Ferdinand - “Bullet” (Official Video)



Franz Ferdinand have already made a generous handful of videos for songs from their new album Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action — for “Right Action,” for “Love Illumination,” and, most disgustingly, for “Evil Eye.” Now they’ve got another one, and it’s a comparatively low-key affair, made up of nothing but footage of the band performing. But director Andy Knowles’s clip for the jumpy “Bullet” is still an excellent example of the live-footage video. His camera spins around the band on a soundstage and he keeps the cuts quick and rhythmic, while the band puts a ton of energy into what they do. The result is a kinetic little piece of filmmaking.

Bob Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone' Released As Groundbreaking Interactive Video

http://video.bobdylan.com/desktop.html
Click image or visit Video Bob Dylan

Revolutionary Technology Sparks First Official Video For 50-Year-Old Classic Recording

New York, NY - When Bob Dylan released “Like A Rolling Stone” in 1965 – forever shattering all pre-conceived notions for what a pop single could be in terms of length, sound and subject matter - no official music video was ever created to accompany his release. But nearly a half-century later, a groundbreaking interactive project has been created for the song, allowing fans to experience the classic recording in unprecedented ways. Today, the Bob Dylan – “Like a Rolling Stone” Interactive Video is unveiled worldwide on BobDylan.com, coinciding with The Complete Album Collection Volume 1, just released on Columbia/Legacy Recordings.

The Bob Dylan – “Like a Rolling Stone” Interactive Video showcases a patented technology platform, created by the digital media company Interlude, which allows viewers to play an active role in the story of the music video. The experience begins when users press play and have the ability to surf 16 different “TV channels” within the video in real-time. These channels are comprised of American TV formats in which, no matter what channel you are on, the hosts and actors are all lip-syncing the lyrics to "Like a Rolling Stone" as the song continues to play seamlessly. No two people will engage with the video in the same way twice. The full interactive video can also be experienced on iPhones and iPads and is easily shared across social media platforms.

A number of recognizable TV shows and talent can be spotted throughout the firm, and savvy viewers will no doubt make connections between some of these appearances and the song’s lyrics, as well as to certain moments from throughout Bob Dylan’s 50-plus years as a worldwide cultural figure.

“We're forever looking for compelling, creative ways to distinguish our artists and their music from the din. The Interlude treatment of “Like a Rolling Stone” provides us with a unique, playful, highly engaging platform from which we can reach - and ideally attract - Dylan fans from across the spectrum," said Adam Block, President of Sony Music/Legacy Recordings.

“As a musician myself, I can’t imagine a more thrilling project to be a part of than helping create the first video for ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ which is widely regarded as one of the greatest songs of all time,” said Yoni Bloch, founder and CEO of Interlude. “The song has repeatedly been voted the No. 1 Greatest Song of All Time by Rolling Stone, and is generally regarded as revolutionary, influencing both artists and popular music around the world. Like the song, we hope Interlude will inspire creative professionals everywhere to develop new and unique ways to tell stories through video.”

With its cutting-edge interactive video technology, Interlude (repeat winner of Most Innovative Video at the MTV O Music Awards) partnered with award-winning content creator Pulse Films (LCD Soundsystem’s "Shut Up and Play the Hits" and Blur’s "No Distance Left to Run") and Walter Pictures (Best Music Video Award winner by Time Magazine, Pitchfork, and MTV Woodie Awards) to make an extraordinary first official video for Dylan’s seminal song.

The video is being released in conjunction with The Complete Album Collection Volume 1, from Columbia/Legacy Recordings. This 47-CD boxed set contains 35 studio titles (including the first-ever North American release of 1973's Dylan album on CD); 6 live albums; the 2-CD Side Tracks, which compiles in one set previously released non-album singles, tracks from the original Biograph boxed-set and other compilations; a deluxe-bound hardcover book featuring new album-by-album liner notes from famed author Clinton Heylin and a new introduction by noted journalist and television personality Bill Flanagan. This project is also available as a limited-edition harmonica-shaped USB stick containing all the music, in both MP3 and FLAC lossless formats. The Bob Dylan Bootleg Series App was also just released, featuring over 500 pieces of rare and historical content.

About Interlude

Interlude (interlude.fm) is a digital media company that designs, develops and markets interactive video technology. Treehouse is Interlude’s self-serve authoring suite that enables all video creators, whether enthusiasts or professionals, to create interactive videos. Founded by Israeli musician Yoni Bloch and his band, Interlude is backed by Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital, NEA, Marker and Innovation Endeavors.

Read more: http://www.bobdylan.com/us#ixzz2l7XXphUY

Kanye West – “Bound 2″ (Full Uncensored Version)



Kanye West was a guest on Ellen this morning, and he took the opportunity to debut the video for his disarmingly personable Yeezus closer “Bound 2,” just as he’d done with the “Love Lockdown” video in 2008. “Bound 2″ is the one song on the album that drops the industrial chest-rattle sound and returns him to the doofy soul-sampling Kanye of old, but the video doesn’t exactly resurrect the old Kanye video persona. Instead, it features him and topless fiancee Kim Kardashian going on a green-screened desert motorcycle ride, and it’ll take a little bit to figure out what all’s going on there. Nick Knight directed the video, and you can watch it and Kanye’s interview with Ellen DeGeneres below.

Galantis - "Smile" (Official Video) (NSFW)



Galantis, who we last heard collaborating with A-Trak, is the partnership of Christian Karlsson (of experimental popsters Miike Snow and “Toxic” production duo Bloodshy & Avant) and Linus Eklow (aka DJ/producer Style Of Eye). They’ve got a new single called “Smile” that bridges the gap between Imogen Heap, Sam Smith, and Calvin Harris. That is to say, it bangs… emotionally. The video, directed by Dano Cerny of Hyperballad, features some emotional banging of its own; several couples (and one threesome) are depicted in various states of seduction and intercourse. O-faces abound, and at the end it looks like an orgy is brewing. Technically, this is the PG-rated version, and a more explicitly NSFW version is coming soon, but, fair warning, this “clean” one might raise eyebrows at the office too. Might be worth risking your job security just to hear this song though.

The Beatles - “Words Of Love” (Official Video)


This year’s holiday-timed Beatles release On Air – Live At The BBC Volume 2 — the sequel to 1994′s Live At The BBC — is focused exclusively on the teeny-bopping, moptopping 1963-64 era. So the video for Buddy Holly cover “Words Of Love” naturally zeroes in on the peak of Beatlemania, before psychedelics and facial hair entered the picture. There’s also some zany animation. Watch below and marvel that this stuff happened 50 years ago.


On Air – Live At The BBC Volume 2 — all 63 tracks of it –is out now via Capitol. Also of note, the Grammys are producing a two-hour special to air this February celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles’ legendary appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Queens Of The Stone Age - “The Vampyre Of Time And Memory” Interactive Music Video



The new interactive video for “The Vampyre Of Time And Memory,” a song from the Queens Of The Stone Age album …Like Clockwork, is full of dark imagery: Coffins, dead animals, venus flytraps, the witchy woman who shares lip-syncing duties with the embalmed-looking Josh Homme. Kii Arens and Jason Trucco directed the video in partnership with the Creators Project, and it comes in two different forms: An interactive version of the video, and a regular YouTube one, which you can watch.

Check out the interactive version of the video here.

Damien Jurado - "Silver Timothy" (Official Video)



Veteran Pacific Northwest singer-songwriter Damien Jurado has a new set of weathered, Richard Swift-produced folk-pop on the way by the name of Brothers And Sisters Of The Eternal Son. Today we see the video for the album’s first single, “Silver Timothy,” which, between its lite psych-pop sound and the spacious desert scenes, reminds me of the recent Broken Bells material. Director Justin Koleszar does a great job capturing frazzled human emotion and the glory of nature in this clip, and Jurado’s high-pitched warble is just as evocative. Have a look.

Wampire – “The Hearse” (Official Video)



Earlier this year, the Portland indie-pop duo Wampire — this, despite them being named “Wampire” and everything — and released Curiosity, their debut album, which Universal Mortal Orchestra’s Jake Portrait produced. Today, they give us their video for the single “The Hearse.” It tells the story of an ’80s-style photo shoot that turns dark and obsessive and violent. Its use of period-specific detail and atmosphere is dead-on, even though I’m pretty sure the ending makes no sense whatsoever. Raphaël Pfeiffer directs.

11/18/2013

Beady Eye - "Soul Love" (Official Video)



Music video by Beady Eye performing Soul Love. Directed by Charlie Lightening. 

Beady Eye’s “Soul Love” is not, fortunately or unfortunately depending on where you stand, a David Bowie cover. What is it, then? An exceptionally low-key and winsome ballad from Liam Gallagher’s ex-Oasis ensemble. Watch the resplendently colorful performance video.

Demdike Stare - “Transmission” (Official Video)


It’s tough to count how many excellent producers are making dark, unsettling dance music right now. Andy Stott, the Haxan Cloak, and Forest Swords all have tremendous full-length records that you shouldn’t listen to when walking alone at night, and that’s just scratching the surface of the deep rosters at Tri Angle, Blackest Ever Black, and Modern Love. But if there’s one group that has absolutely dominated this sound, it’s Demdike Stare. The duo of Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty got attention back in 2010 with the colossal triple-CD Tryptych, a 2 1/2 hour sprawl of intoxicatingly creepy dub-techno, and followed it with last year’s equally great Elemental.

Since then Demdike Stare has pulled focus a bit and started the Testpressing series. They’re simple stripped down things — vinyl only releases with just an A-side and a B-side, no artwork, no real title — yet inside is some of the most exciting music the group has ever done. This December they’ll put out the fourth installment in the series and you can watch an ominous excerpt.

Kylesa - “Low Tide” (Official Video)



The great Southern fuzz-metal band Kylesa earned themselves Album Of The Week distinctions earlier this year for the searching, soaring, melodic LP Ultraviolent, and with their new video for the heaving album track “Low Tide,” the push its psychedelic side even further. Director Brodie Rush’s animated video cycles through various expanded-brain signifiers — interplanetary bodies, glowing-eyed wraiths, mysterious pipes to nowhere, brains in pots — in one long goopy free-associative headrush.

Mike G – “DAM” (Feat. Left Brain) Video



Mike G is Odd Future’s secret weapon, the crew’s most quietly capable non-Earl Sweatshirt rapper. In his video for “DAM,” an early track from his forthcoming Mike Check Vol. II mixtape, he and MellowHype’s Left Brain, who guests on the chorus, smoke hookahs, flash gold fronts, and twirl lightsabres. It’s an elegantly stoned affair.

11/15/2013

Avionica - "Para Vos" (Official Video)



Musica : Avionica
Letra : Cacho Romero / Avionica
Productor : Sebastian Krys
Director : Ariel Annexy Labault
Ilustraciones y Animaciones : Jose Gutierrez

M.I.A. - "Y.A.L.A." (Official Video)



Rainbow rave explosions with glow-in-the-dark Matangi goddess Maya. Let's dance unto infinity with Y.A.L.A... You Always Live Again!

M.I.A. is on her Enter The Void shit. The video for “Y.A.L.A.” — the contra-Drake rave assault from her new album Matangi — comes with an epilepsy warning, and holy shit does it ever earn it. The clip uses flashing lights and negative color-schemes to turn M.I.A.’s already-severe on-camera presence into some sort of gargoyle-queen visage, making ample use of the best pop sneer since Billy Idol. It’s all sensation, and it’s pretty great. M.I.A. made the video in collaboration with the British fashion-and-stuff magazine i-D and with the fashion house Kenzo, and Daniel Sannwald directed.

LAKE – “Perfect Fit” Video



LAKE put out their record The World Is Real earlier this year, and now their video for the track “Perfect Fit” finds the duo in a slightly surreal domestic mode. They’re doing pretty standard things — washing dishes, hanging up clothes, making breakfast — but everything is amplified to massive quantity. They’re folding clothes into piles taller than them, washing more dishes that most people own, and so on. If for no other reason, you should watch it simply for that massive amount of pancakes pictured above.

Rilo Kiley – “Emotional” Video



Rilo Kiley already shared one video from its career-spanning rarities collection rkives, the fan-servicey tour footage montage “Let Me Back In.” Today they’ve released visuals for “Emotional,” a B-side from 2002′s The Execution Of All Things, and the footage is from far earlier — specifically, it cobbles together black-and-white scenes from the ’50s and ’60s. Director Austin Nagler talked to Rolling Stone about his inspiration:
The video makes me think of the way Bill Hicks would often end his act by saying ’The world is like a ride at an amusement park. When I originally cut the video, I put footage of Hicks performing that quote with half of it before the vid and the other half after.
As for the song: It’s incredible. If you’re a big enough Rilo Kiley fan to bump the B-sides, you probably already knew that. Find the vide for your enjoyment.

After The Smoke – “Wallstreet” Video



After The Smoke, the project of multimedia artist Rob Coin, is releasing a mixtape called Mircowaves next month, and from the look and sound of Coin’s new “Wallstreet” video, it’s gonna be rad. In the past, as on last year’s “Typical Weekend,” Coin has focused on singing, but “Wallstreet” is straight dusty grooves hip-hop that ought to appeal to fans of Endtroducing….. DJ Shadow. It’s propulsive yet floaty, smooth yet grimy, direct yet deeply textured.

Rihanna - "What Now" (Official Video)



Music video by Rihanna performing What Now (Official)

Rihanna is giving fans a behind-the-scenes look at her upcoming “What Now” music video.
The footage shows the singer doing “exorcism-type” dance moves in contrasting black and white rooms.

Rihanna tells the camera that people are probably expecting “a love story,” but the video is actually very “demented.”

Rihanna - What Now (Behind The Scenes)


Austra - “Forgive Me” (Official Video)


Over the summer, the Toronto electro-influenced art-pop group Austra released their very good sophomore album Olympia. Director Claire Edmondson has made them a darkly gleaming, cinematic video for the chilly album track “Forgive Me,” and it’s all about the search for illicit nighttime encounters. Bits and pieces of the video might be slightly NSFW, so proceed with caution.

Big Eyes - “The Sun Still Shines” (Official Video)



Seattle trio Big Eyes play razor-sharp power-pop, as violently urgent as it is effortlessly catchy. In Brendan McKnight’s video for “The Sun Still Shines” from the band’s sophomore effort Almost Famous, that violent side comes out. Faces are punched, shots are fired, blood is spilled, and all in all everybody has a wonderful time other than that whole “ending up dead” thing. Watch singer Kate Eldridge break bad .

Roosevelt - "Montreal" (Official Video)



We heard Roosevelt’s glorious New Wave-disco sound swash “Montreal” last month, his second stunner of the year after “Elliot.” Now there’s a video for “Montreal,” reminding us that behind the visage of every shadowy producer from Cologne is a regular guy who likes making music with his bros. It’s colorful and retro.

Pusha T – “Hold On” (Feat. Rick Ross) Explicit Video



Pusha T released his awesomely stark and snarly album My Name Is My Name last month, and for months, he’s been making cold and minimal and effective videos for the album’s tracks: “Numbers On The Board,” “King Push,” “Nosetalgia,” “Sweet Serenade,” “Pain.” Now, he’s got another one, for the Rick Ross collab “Hold On,” which Kanye West and Hudson Mohawke co-produced. This one is probably the least interesting of the bunch, but it still has some cool imagery. It revolves around Pusha and Ross conducting what appears to be an emotional dope-house symposium, and frequent Ross collaborator DRE Films directed it.

Messi vs Aliens (Messi joins as Captain of #GALAXY11)



Aliens have challenged Earth to one ultimate football game, and Leo Messi has been selected as Captain of the one team who can save us.

11/14/2013

A$AP Rocky – “Phoenix” Video (Feat. Michael K. Williams)



Michael K. Williams played Omar on The Wire, which will always make him one of the greatest human beings on the planet. He last appeared on Stereogum as the star of MGMT’s vivid and surreal “Cool Song No. 2” clip. Now, he’s added another music video to his resume. He and model Joan Smalls play two halves of a very unhappy couple in A$AP Rocky’s video for the moody Long.Live.A$AP track “Phoenix.” Francesco Carrozzini directed the video, which he wrote with Asia Argento. Watch it at Miss Info.

Ka – “You Know It’s About” Video



Earlier this year, the Brooklyn rapper/producer Ka released the heavy, meditative The Night’s Gambit, one of the year’s best rap albums. Ka doesn’t just make all his own beats and self-release his albums; he also directs and edits the noirish, atmospheric black-and-white videos he makes for his songs. The new clip for the tingly, percussive “You Know It’s About” is the latest one. It’s mostly images of Ka haunting various nondescript Brooklyn streetcorners, fixing the camera with a thousand-yard stare, but it’s weirdly mesmerizing in its own way.

SZA - "Ice Moon" (Official Video)



It was only a year ago that R&B singer SZA blew us away with her debut EP See SZA Run, and only six months since she released the EP S. Since then, the talented 23-year-old from New Jersey has been signed to Dr. Dre’s label Top Dawg Entertainment as its first female artist, and is already working on her next EP, Z. Now she’s released a music video for her smooth track “Ice Moon” from her S EP. The video features casual SZA in an oversized T-shirt and Converse, wandering through the woods, asking, “show me the way to your hiding place.” The whole thing is very ethereal with the sunlight illuminating her in pools of water, but the real beauty comes from the way SZA mixes airy “ahhs” with her soulful power vocals. The video concludes with her surrounded in a technicolor field as she changes shrieks in elevating octaves then hums, “go to church if you’re scared” in a hauntingly melancholic plea. 

Balance And Composure – “Tiny Raindrop” Video



With "Tiny Raindrop," the second video from Balance and Composure's new album The Things We Think We’re Missing, frontman Jon Simmons trips on fireworks, wheat fields and blurry car rides. The band's eye-catching clip matches the expansive, guitar-driven sound that links them to the Smashing Pumpkins and Band of Horses.

"The video was directed by our good friend Alex Henery and he had the idea of making the video a dream concept," Simmons tells Rolling Stone. "We decided to have shots with me and a girl, Caroline Newton, but it's hard to see her face in full, just like a real dream. The video is me having visions of being with her but then repeatedly losing her. We shot the video all over Bucks County in our hometown and some shots in Philadelphia."

The clip's exterior footage is fitting, considering that Simmons and his bandmates – Erik Petersen, Andy Slaymaker, Matt Warner and Bailey Van Ellis – wrote the bulk of the album in the scenic Poconos. They recently wrapped a national tour with Coheed and Cambria.

David Bowie – “Love Is Lost (James Murphy Remix)” Video Version 2 (NSFW)



We’ve already posted one video for James Murphy’s amazing 10-minute remix of David Bowie’s “Love Is Lost.” That one was a dark, murky, marionette-dominated affair that only used four minutes of the remix. But now that remix has another video, and the new one uses the entire masterful track. The new one, from director Barnaby Jones, starts out as abstract digital shapes, which eventually turn into two naked people making out.

Julianna Barwick - "The Harbinger" (Official Video)



Earlier this year Julianna Barwick released Nepenthe, a record that pushed her impressionistic vocal collages to a beautiful peak. The video for “The Harbinger” is equally impressionistic, providing just the briefest sketches of a story — a body floating in water, a ghost-like after-image, one brief flash of a man’s face. It’s the fact that these gentle brushstrokes, much like the music, are expressed with such passion and emotion that makes the video stick in your mind. You feel it, even if you don’t understand it. Directed by Derrick Belcham, who was also behind Barwick’s recent live performance where she sang with trick-or-treaters.

Run The Jewels – “Banana Clipper” (Feat. Big Boi)



El-P and Killer Mike are both monstrous rappers. So when the two joined forces on their violent-rap-friends opus Run The Jewels earlier this year, they didn’t feel the need to make a lot of room for guest rappers. There was, however, one exception: Mike’s OutKast mentor Big Boi, who jumped on the end of the thundering “Banana Clipper.” And now he’s also in the track’s video. The (banana) clip is a simple but energetic affair — just three dudes rapping in a parking lot full of cars doing donuts — and that approach fits the song’s hard-as-fuck directness.

11/13/2013

Phoenix - “Chloroform” Video (Dir. Sofia Coppola)



The filmmaker Sofia Coppola is married to Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars, and she’s directed a video for “Chloroform,” one of the songs from Phoenix’s recent Bankrupt! album. It’s a slow-moving black-and-white clip that shows the band performing in a small room. Most of the video, though, is devoted to the reactions of the audience — specifically, to the reactions from the teary-eyed young women who watch Mars adoringly. As with many of the things Coppola directs, the video leaves itself open to many interpretations, and not all of them are flattering. For instance: Coppola is gloating that everyone wants her man, and it’s an egotistical video! Or: Coppola is stressing that everyone wants her man, and it’s an insecure video! But whatever the case, the video is also a gorgeously shot and put-together piece of work, and that’s another thing that you can say about just about all of Coppola’s work. 

Watch it at PopRally (via Pitchfork).

Mick Turner – “The Bird Catcher” (Feat. Karen Black) (Official Video)



Next week, Mick Turner, of Australian post-rockers Dirty Three, will release his solo album Don’t Tell The Driver, a somber and mostly-instrumental work very much in keeping with what he does in his main band. And right now, you can stream the album at The New York Times. Turner has also shared a video for the meditative, fractured eight-minute album track “The Bird Catcher.” Director Cam Archer made the video with Karen Black, the much-loved cult actress and singer who died earlier this year.

11/12/2013

Lily Allen - “Hard Out Here” (Official Video)



Lily Allen back! The awesomely sneery British pop singer left the game for a few years and had new kids, but she’s primed to make a big return with a new album next year. She’s already covered Keane for a British department-store commercial, and now she’s got her first real single since 2009. It’s called “Hard Out Here,” and it’s an Auto-Tuned pop song that also works as an on-the-nose parody of Auto-Tuned pop songs, or at least the wing of pop culture that produces them. The glossy video, from director Christopher Sweeney, looks at the usual champagne-on-tits music video cliches through the lens of body-image issues and institutional sexism.

Charli XCX – “SuperLove (Yeasayer Remix)” Video



The Yeasayer remix of “SuperLove” was a woozy and psychedelic take on Charli XCX’s most recent single and now you can watch the video for it. It’s a darker video than the original’s robot-dancing, candy-colored explosion of good vibes. It’s just Charli in a wide open studio, but it fits the remix just right.

Blood Orange – “Time Will Tell” Video



Blood Orange’s fantastic Cupid Deluxe is out today, and so is the video for album closer “Time Will Tell,” a warm-blooded coda that calls back to “Champagne Coast” from 2011′s Coastal Grooves among other components. Hynes explains the track’s origin:
“Time Will Tell” is the closing track from the album CUPID DELUXE. The song itself was recorded live in a one take that lasted about 15 minutes I ad-libbed the vocals recalling lyrics from songs of mine and a song by Adam Bainbridge (which he was unaware i was going to do). Adam was on the drum machine, Blue May on guitar, Sam Beste on piano, & Tawiah on backing vocals. I then took some of my vocals from towards the end and overlaid it as a backing vocal.
For the video, director Alan Del Rio Ortiz has Hynes in all white at a white piano, then standing up and busting a move per choreography by Juri Onuki that involves a chair and a coat rack. It’s the kind of low-budget, highly expressive wildness you could imagine appearing on early ’80s MTV, which is to say, it’s oh so very Blood Orange.

Keep Shelly In Athens – “Oostende”



Greek synth-pop emoters Keep Shelly In Athens released At Home this year, but they aren’t finished culling great videos from the record’s exquisite songs. The latest, “Oostende,” is a mournfully epic letterboxed love story to match a mournfully epic song, an ’80s throwback that splits the difference between M83 and the Drive soundtrack. Directors Brendan Canty (not the guy from Fugazi) and Conal Thomson of production company Feel Good Lost flesh out the themes of distance and longing with a modern-day odyssey of sorts. It’ll tug the ol’ heartstrings a bit. Have a look.

Google Glass Gets Into The Music Game


As soon as it came out, the $1,500 futuristic eyewear known as Google Glass became something of a punchline. But the technology now has some music apps that go along with it, and those apps seem pretty fucking cool. Using voice-activated commands, you can now identify a song that you might hear, find that song, buy it, and even search out a place to find that song on vinyl. And in the promotional video below, Jay-Z sound engineer Young Guru does exactly that, hearing a song in a Mexican restaurant and then finding that exact same song on vinyl.




Later this month, Google Glass will get its own cusomized earbuds, and you can read more about the glasses’ music functions at Rolling Stone.

Teengirl Fantasy – “Nun” Video



The Oberlin-born, Amsterdam-based dance duo Teengirl Fantasy have a new EP called Nun coming later this month, and in making a video for its skittery and evocative title track, they’ve recruited director Hans Lo to make something of a glitched-out Gravity. Lo made the video by editing together surveillance footage of Earth’s ecosystems.

Shearwater – “I Luv The Valley Oh!” (Xiu Xiu Cover) Video



The great indie-prog falsetto-floggers Shearwater will soon release their all-covers album Fellow Travelers, and we’ve already posted their excellent versions of Xiu Xiu’s “I Luv The Valley Oh!” and Baptist Generals’ “Fucked Up Life.” They’ve now shared the video for their Xiu Xiu cover, and it’s got frontman Jonathan Meiburg playing an astronaut who’s stranded on a mysterious desert planet. Branan Edgens directed the headfuck sci-fi clip, and you can watch it below.

Sampha – “Happens” Video



Today, the expansive British soul singer Sampha releases his own solo-piano version of his Drake collab “Too Much” as a single. The song’s B-side is another piano-and-voice song from Sampha, a soft and lovely lament called “Happens.” This guy sounds great when he’s singing over diffuse, of-the-moment variations on dance music, but it turns out that he also sounds great in the most traditional, stripped-down context. Listen, and check out the minimal video from director Cherise Payne.

Hebronix - “Bad Days” (Feat. Neil Hagerty) Official Video



Ex-Yuck frontman Daniel Blumberg recorded his superb Hebronix debut album Unreal with producer Neil Hagerty of Royal Trux aka Howling Hex. Now the pair is continuing and deepening its fruitful partnership with a new collaborative 7-inch called Heb-Hex. Our first taste from the record is “Bad Days” — not a Flaming Lips cover, although I’d love to hear Blumberg’s take on that song too.

This one trades the dreamy sprawl of album tracks "Unreal" and "Viral" for a compact, strummy approach. It’s further evidence that Blumberg is one of the best young melody writers around, and it makes me hope these guys keep working together for the foreseeable future. Watch the video, which stars a bunch of action figures and cardboard cutouts

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - “Lariat” (Lyric Video)



Malkmus is back! Stephen Malkmus and his band the Jicks made their big return to the stage last week in Portland, and now they’ve announced plans for their excellently titled new album Wig Out At Jagbags. Here’s what Malkmus has to say about the album in a statement:
Wig Out at Jagbags is inspired by Cologne, Germany, Mark Von Schlegell, Rosemarie Trockel, Von Spar and Jan Lankisch, Can and Gas; Stephen-Malkmus-imagined Weezer/Chili Peppers, Sic Alps, UVA in the late 80′s, NYRB, Aroma Charlottenburg, inactivity, Jamming, Indie guys tring to sound Memphis, Flipper, Pete Townshend, Pavement, The Joggers, The NBA and home life in the 2010′s…
“Lariat” is the loose, scrappy, ebullient first single, and its video, directed by Leblanc + Cudmore, is a sort-of lyric video in which a charming young lady, in an apartment full of very serious people, translates the lyrics into French. I don’t know why it works, but it does.

Drake - “Worst Behavior” (Explitic Video)



Drake’s last video, “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” was a wonderfully silly short film featuring guest stars like A$AP Rocky. The one before that, Started From The Bottom, was also a narrative interspersed with skits. And the latest, a 10-minute clip for “Worst Behavior,” is just as gleefully goofy.
Director X’s Memphis-shot visuals include Drake’s father, Dennis Graham, strutting his stuff in a flashy white suit and lip-syncing Drake’s lyrics, as well as guest appearances from Juicy J and Project Pat in a ridiculous comedic interlude. Drake’s in there too carrying a baby, as is somebody wearing a costume of Drake’s signature OVO owl logo blown up to mascot size.

11/11/2013

Future - “Real And True” (Feat. Miley Cyrus & Mr. Hudson) (Official Video)



Last week, we heard “Real And True,” the bizarrely Coldplay-esque piano ballad that the great Atlanta Auto-Tune gargler Future recorded with Miley Cyrus and Mr. Hudson. That song now has what might be the first post-Gravity music video. Director Rankin has cast Future and Hudson as astronauts, and Future has “Future” written across the back of his spacesuit, which I love. A bodysuited Miley plays a glittery glowing alien, which seems about right. The video is perfectly ridiculous, and you can watch it at YOUKU.

Arcade Fire – “Afterlife (YouTube Music Awards version)" (Dir. Spike Jonze)

Suggested course of action: (1) See Frances Ha. (2) Watch this video. (3) Formulate an alternate-universe mental narrative where this video is the best possible happy ending for Greta Gerwig’s character. You’ll feel better afterwards, I promise.


Arcade Fire – “Afterlife (YouTube Music Awards version)" (Dir. Spike Jonze)


Arcade Fire - "Afterlife" (Official Video)



The members of Arcade Fire don’t appear in their brand-new video for the powerful Reflektor track “Afterlife,” and nobody in the clip adheres to the band’s live-show dress code. Instead, the great music-video director Emily Kai Bock starts things off with a tense Spanish dinner-table conversation, then goes deep into the dreams and longings of all the people involved. Produced by the Creators Project, it’s an empathetic and visually ravishing piece of work — to my mind, a vast improvement over the band’s “Reflektor” video, if not the version of “Afterlife” that Spike Jonze staged at the YouTube Music Awards.

Guards – “Coming True” (Official Video)


Guards put out their debut album earlier this year and now have a video for “Coming True.” It features the band playing under some dramatic shifting lightning, along with the occasional burst of confetti.

Delorean – “Unhold” (Feat. Caroline Polachek) Video



Chairlift leader Caroline Polachek sings lead on “Unhold,” a song from the Barcelona dance-rock band Delorean’s new album Apar. She’s also the star of the song’s new video. Director Eric Epstein films Polachek, wearing a cape and looking like a mythical character, swanning around New York’s Opus 40 sculpture park. The members of Delorean appear in some other location, and both they and Polachek are shown through perspective-distorting camera lenses.

Vic Mensa - YNSP (feat. Eliza Doolittle) (Official Video)



Mensa’s new video is for “YNSP,” his collaboration with the British singer Eliza Doolittle, best known around these parts for being on Disclosure’s “You & Me.” But Doolittle isn’t in the video. Instead, director Nem Perez casts Mensa and his friends as glitches in the matrix, skittery computer-animated figures who never hang together for long.

SixToes – “Low Guns” (Feat. Dave Gahan)



Official video for SixToes' Low Guns Featuring Dave Gahan.

The word “cinematic” gets tossed around a lot for the sake of musical hyperbole, but it’s a fine fit for the awkwardly named London outfit SixToes, especially when their ornately dramatic folk-rock is set to a video like this one. The visuals for “Low Guns,” the sextet’s recent collaboration with Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan from forthcoming sophomore LP The Morning After, pay homage to Straylight’s short film “Glide2.” Like that clip, director Henry Cowling’s “Low Guns” video follows a single extended shot through a London train station, but this one involved coordinating a cast of dozens of fake military officers, dancers, circus performers and the members of SixToes themselves in slow-motion. Shot from the perspective of a high-speed train car (or “tube carriage” as they’re called over there) at the Ravenscourt Park court station, the clip spreads seven seconds of footage into three-and-a-half incredible minutes. The song is a masterpiece in its own right, and the video only multiplies the excellence.

Miami Horror ft. Sarah Chernoff - "Real Slow" (Official Video)


Directed by Victor Pakpour

Australian/LA-based psychedelic-dance four-piece Miami Horror are back with a wonderfully shot new-wavy video, "Real Slow," via Neon Gold.

According to band producer Benjamin Plant, "'Real Slow' was written around similar experiences that Aaron [Shanahan] and I were having at the time. It's about finding that place or person were you feel secure enough to take things slowly. We wanted to write a song that is more than just a concept, we wanted to write about something we were actually experiencing rather than something imagined. We wanted to see how that emotion translated into our music. I've never been a huge fan of listening to songs about love, no matter how painful or joyous they are, they can seem mediocre, but once you have those experiences for yourself then suddenly, all those songs make sense and become something you can really feel."

11/07/2013

Deltron 3030 - “Melding Of The Minds” (Feat. Zack De La Rocha) (Official Video)



Deltron 3030, the sci-fi rap supergroup that unites Del The Funky Homosapien with Dan The Automator and Kid Koala, came back together earlier this year to release the star-studded reunion album Event II. Today, they give us the video to “Melding Of The Minds,” a collaboration with Rage Against The Machine’s Zack De La Rocha. The animated clip, from director Justin Ian Lee, is a Powerpuff Girls-style adventure about a girl traveling through a dystopic urban landscape full of giant smiling robots.

Louis Vuitton Venice Fim - David Bowie & Arizona Muse (Full Movie)



David Bowie, who’s been awfully busy lately, is the star of a new short film called L’Invitation Au Voyage, which doubles as an advertisement for Louis Vuitton. Romain Gavras, who’s made great music videos for Justice and for M.I.A., directed it. The American model Arizona Muse (no really, that’s her name) plays a lady who lands a hot air balloon in Venice and ends up at a fancy-dress party, where Bowie is playing the Next Day song “I’d Rather Be High” on a harpsichord. This is all tied in with a new Vuitton ad campaign, which also features Bowie. The movie’s only a minute long, and you can watch.

Night Beds - "Lost Springs" (Official Video)



Ramona,” the last music video from the Nashville country-rockers Night Beds, was a lovely little indie-film story that didn’t feature the band at all. The group’s new video for “Lost Springs” has a very different concept — it’s all footage of the band on tour — but it’s got a similarly elegiac vibe working for it. The video is more interested in the play of light on an airplane wing, for instance, than in what the live show looks like, and there’s way more plaintive window-staring than you usually get in a video like this.

Born Ruffians – “Permanent Hesitation” Video



“Permanent Hesitation,” a track from Ontario indie band Born Ruffians’ recent album Birthmarks, is a deeply twitchy song, and its video uses just-off split-screens to mirror that nervous energy. We see frontman Luke Lalonde throughout, but his image is chopped up and reassembled, like a paragraph that’s been translated back and forth in Babelfish and lost all its shape.

Wymond Miles – “Night Drives” (Official Music Video)



Wymond Miles is best known for his work in the Fresh & Onlys, but damn if he didn’t put out another great solo album this year. Cut Yourself Free has many nice moments, but “Night Drives” is still the best and now there’s a video for it. Director Ryan Browne nails it by making a clip that is as colorful and dramatic as Miles’ song.

11/06/2013

These New Puritans – “V (Island Song)” (Official Video)



The British art-rockers These New Puritans dropped their Field Of Reeds album over the summer, and their videos for “Fragment Two” and “Organ Eternal” are crystalline examples of calm, composed filmmaking. The new clip for “V (Island Song)” takes a different track. The animated clip, which PICNIC directed from a script by Jack Barnett, tells the story of a sad, solitary woman who steps through a movie screen and goes on a dark, watery vision quest. Be warned: There’s an eyeball-sushi scene that might have your stomach doing flips.

Paramore - "Daydreaming" (Official Video)



Two friends fly to London to see Paramore live in the group's latest video, "Daydreaming," or is it all a dream? The clip focuses on a blonde and a brunette who look to live in what frontwoman Haley Williams describes in the lyrics as "a city of sleepless people who all know the limits and won't go too far outside the lines," which comes off the group's latest, self-titled album. They pack their bags, go to the airport, needlessly block the expanse of a moving sidewalk and kiss the airport floor. Meanwhile, Williams & Co. perform the song, in black and white, and huddle up backstage. When it's revealed that the young women have arrived in London, the clip depicts them navigating the tube and riding the city's giant Ferris wheel known as the London Eye, all with clips of them back in their small town.

Eventually they make it to the venue, and that's when the real daydreaming begins. Somehow, the couple is able to sneak in backstage, peer in at Paramore in their dressing room, get a wave and a smile from Williams and then, respectfully, move their way to the main, audience-saturated concert area and ultimately find a spot up front to watch the band (now in color). It's a fun fantasy, and it's really never quite clear what's real and what's not.

Quilt – “Arctic Shark” Video


When Quilt released “Arctic Shark” last month it was one of first exciting hints at what music we’d be hearing in 2014. Now we have a video for the track, directed by Merideth Hillbrand & Brandon Andrew which finds the trio sitting in the sun on blankets (QUILTS?!), eating fruit, strumming guitars. It’s a warm, gentle video with subtly psychedelic moments like grapes being picked in reverse. However, camera tricks don’t stand up to singer Anna Rochinski, whose lyrical lysergia comes delivered with a knowing confidence making the most surreal phrases here sound true and grounded.

11/05/2013

RockAndBol Awards 2013 - Best Video list of Nominees

RockAndBol Awards are awards for excellence in the national production of rock, in Bolivia, in different categories, given annually since 2002 in a special ceremony.

Best Video: Nominee - RockAndBol Awards 2013

Los Salmones – "Me Pase de la Raya" (Dir. Dirección: José Luis Cabruja e Ytalo Cabruja)

Krauss – "Ella" (Dir. Gory Patiño)


Karloz de La Torre  – "Piano en Llamas" (Dir. Martín Boulocq)

Karloz de la Torre – "Malos Tragos" Dir. Martín Boulocq)

Doble A – Desubicado (Dir. Eduardo Aguilera & Hugo Cabrera)

Matamba – "Sobrenatural" (Dir. Ian Pons jewell)

Santiago Laserna Ft. Chelo Navia – "Never Let Me Go" (Dir. Álvaro Gumucio Li)

ElectroShock – "Deberías Dejarme Respirar" (Dir. Humberto Paye)

Tóxico 4 – "Te Fuiste" (Dir. Martín Bouloq)

Chvrches - “Lies” (Official Video)



The Bones Of What You Believe, the emotively wide-open debut from the Glasgow synthpop trio Chrvcrhes, was one of this fall’s most immediately likable albums. Director Sing J. Lee‘s video for “Lies,” one of the album’s catchiest songs, has some vague story that involves virtual reality and illusory promises of love. But the real reason to watch is the visual aesthetic, which matches the song’s clean lines with its own.

Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band - “Bad Dancer” (Official Video)



Yoko Ono’s video for “Bad Dancer,” a track off her recent album Take Me To The Land Of Hell, might be the most diversely star-studded video of the year. Reggie Watts, Heems, Greg Saunier of Deerhoof, Ad Rock and Mike D of the Beastie Boys, Ira Glass, Questlove (slow dancing with Ono above), it just goes on and I’m still probably forgetting someone. While it does feature some pretty bad dancing, when you get this many people doing it all together (famous or not) it ends up turning out pretty cool. Watch the video, directed by Ben Dickinson.

Ty Segall - "The Man Man" (Official Video)



Bay Area garage rock don Ty Segall released his spacey, sinister stripped-back psych album Sleeper a few months ago. His new video for the album track “The Man Man” would’ve been perfect for Halloween, but it’s still pretty badass a few days later. In the LEAF-directed video, a quartet of terrifying monster-masked gunmen stalk Segall through a dark street.

Metric – “Synthetica” (Official Video)



The Canadian pop group Metric released their album Synthetica last year, and today they give us the video for the album’s slick title track. Director Justin Broadbent’s video focuses almost entirely on singer Emily Haines. But thanks to a split-screen and a mirroring effect, we get a quadruple-view of Haines the entire time, which effect gives the video a glossy kaleidoscopic feel.

Frightened Rabbit – “Holy” (Official Video)



Frightened Rabbit released their fourth album, Pedestrian Verse, earlier this year and now have a video for the track “Holy.” It follows a business woman who breaks down during a meeting and leaves to walk through the Scottish countryside, carry-on in tow.

Woods – “It Ain’t Easy” (Official Music Video)



The New York campfire-psych band Woods came out with their album Bend Beyond more than a year ago, but that LP has lost no luster in the time since its release; if anything, it sounds better now than when it came out. Artist Adarsha Benjamin, who directed or co-directed the band’s previous videos for “Cali In A Cup” and “Size Meets The Sound,” has a new video for the acoustic rampble “It Ain’t Easy.” And like those two previous videos, it’s all Super 8 footage of pretty things happening in California. This time around, it’s images of an outsider-art sculpture garden and of sunflowers swaying in breeze. And if your office is freezing fucking cold, like mine is right now, it’s a nice little burst of escapism.

11/04/2013

Califone - "Frosted Tips" (Official Video)



Califone have released a video for their August-released single “Frosted Tips” and not a single person in the clip has the hair dye atrocity for which the song is named. Instead, the video features a falling flowerpot making its way to the ground from atop an extremely tall high rise, giving the viewer a glimpse into everything that’s going on in the building. There are people partying, dudes taking selfies, a couple doing an aerobics video together, and a cult meeting, among other things, some of which are not safe for work. 

Rick Ross - "No Games" (Explicit) ft. Future



The thunderous Future collab “No Games” is Rick Ross’s biggest song in a minute, and someone must’ve realized that a song like that needs a video that’s better than the shitty one that’s just a bunch of Scarface clips and footage of Ross rapping in a hotel. So now we get the real video: Mad Max car-chases, underground fighting rings, fireballs, girls whose white catsuits turn transparent in the rain, milk-colored assault rifles, Future looking like Blade. Colin Tilley, the current holder of the Hype Williams amazing overblown theatrical rap-video director crown, is the man to thank.

Juana Molina - "Eras" (Official Music Video)


“Eras” is the first track Argentine singer Juana Molina gave us from her new album Wed 21 and now she has released an accompanying visual treatment. The clip features a dinner party so out of the norm that you really just need to watch it in all its bizarre glory. But the image above should give you a good preview of food prep — yes, that is a masked figure sewing together lettuce leaves — and how the whole fantastical thing proceeds. Check it out below and read our Q&A with Molina here.