Lana Del Rey - “Ultraviolence” (Official Video)

Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence is one of the year’s best albums, in no small part due to its eerie, controversial title track. Now director Francesco Corrozzini has delivered a clip for “Ultraviolence” that’s strikingly simple in its depiction of Del Rey wandering around the great outdoors in a wedding dress. An epic song deserves an epic video, and personally I’m feeling a little underwhelmed by this one.

Foxygen - “How Can You Really” (Official Video)

Foxygen spent much of last year dealing with a whole lot of drama, which at times overshadowed the actual album they released, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace & Magic. Now they’ve announced a follow-up, a 24-song collection that will be titled Foxygen … And Star Power, and with that announcement, they’ve given us the album’s first single and video. “How Can You Really” is a totally excellent bit of Cali psych pop bursting with joyous melodies that will engulf you in sweetness and light. Directed by Grant Singer

Speedy Ortiz - “American Horror” (Official Video)

Speedy Ortiz released their Real Hair EP earlier this year, and it included “American Horror,” one of the band’s very best songs to date. Now they’ve given that song a charming video, directed by Peter Binswanger, which riffs on some horror-movie and video-game references, but with a pretty silly and good-natured attitude. It’s less American Horror Story and more in the spirit of how most people actually act while watching American Horror Story. With all the things that pop up in this video, I feel like you could sit down with this band and have a really fun conversation about Suspiria, Mortal Kombat, and Day Of The Tentacle.

Janelle Monáe - “Electric Lady” (Official Video)

Janelle Monáe’s blast of an album, The Electric Lady, came out almost a year ago. So it’s a bit of a surprise to be getting a video for its title track today — but hey, any Janelle Monáe-related news is good news, right? The video shows Monáe going to an Electro Phi Beta sorority party (emeritus members include Kimbra and T-Boz), which eventually turns into choreographed dancing, because of course it does. The whole thing looks like a hell of a lot of fun.

Son Lux - “Lanterns Lit” (Official Video)

Son Lux’s latest video from last year’s darkly experimental pop effort Lanterns is for the album’s trembling sorta title track “Lanterns Lit.” Directed by SJ Finlay in Southeast Asia, it finds an entire community’s attention fixated on a rocket’s climb to space. What’s lacking in terms of rocket imagery is more than made up for in stunning landscape shots. It’s a gorgeous clip for a gorgeous song. Watch.

Mac DeMarco - “Chamber Of Reflection” Video

The video for Mac DeMarco’s “Chamber Of Reflection” starts off with a woman crouching in front of a Ford truck grille wearing a Homer Simpson mask — and it only gets weirder from there. She lays in hammocks, walks down the street, gets on the subway, drinks water from a fire hydrant — all regular things non-Homer-masked people do. Celebrities, they’re just like us! We follow this mopey, dead-eyed Homer throughout Brooklyn as DeMarco’s sludgy psychedelia serenades in the background.

Public Access TV - “Rebounder” (Official Video)

Public Access TV is a New York pop-rock trio fronted by John Eatherly, a former member of the great Nashville teenage punk troublemakers Be Your Own Pet who later served as a sideman for the likes of Eleanor Friedberger, Smith Westerns, The Virgins, and Chairlift. Friedberger recently shouted him out in NME:

John from Public Access TV possesses that embarrassing-to-admit and hard-to-define quality known as “star power.” He has the best stage presence of anyone I’ve ever played with. He made the best sideman for me, and it was only a matter of time before he had the nerve to front his own band.

Eatherly’s own music is a pleasing cocktail of Britpop, ’70s pop-punk, and the early aughts garage rock revival. “Rebounder,” the title track from Public Accesss TV’s forthcoming EP, goes especially heavy on the Britpop part of that equation; the friendly ghost of Blur’s “Girls & Boys” looms large. Watch director Douglas Hart’s video for the song, which serves as a handy introduction to the band.

Beverly - “Out On A Ride” (Official Video)

Drew Citron and Frankie Rose’s new project, Beverly, just released the very nice album Careers, and now they’ve got a new video for “Out On A Ride.” It plays out like a travelogue of the band’s last few months, as they drive around, play shows, and just goof off in general.

The Gaslight Anthem - “Rollin’ And Tumblin’” (Official Video)

“Rollin’ and Tumblin’” was our first taste of the Gaslight Anthem’s new album Get Hurt, which is shaping up to be the band’s most stylistically diverse album yet. Now that song has gotten the video treatment and it’s a crisp black-and-white affair that sees the band playing opposite a group of elegant dancers who have donned some spooky skeleton-style face paint and are doing some on-the-nose literal rolling and tumbling on the floor.

The Raveonettes - “Endless Sleeper” Video (NSFW)

Last week, the Raveonettes surprised us all by releasing the new album Pe’ahi without any prior notice. The album opens with the blaring, aggressive synth-rock of “Endless Sleeper,” and today you can watch that song’s very creepy music video, directed by the band’s Sune Rose Wagner. It begins with a long shot of a pair of people naked on the beach — almost like the love scene in From Here To Eternity — but eventually shifts into something more unsettling, and brings to mind the far darker beach scene from Jonathan Glazer’s recent Under The Skin.

Real Estate - “Had To Hear” (Official Video)

I became a homeowner recently in a neighborhood that could be described as quasi-suburban, and whether painting the interior or cooking my wife a birthday dinner I’ve found Real Estate’s Atlas to be as fitting a soundtrack for domestic bliss as my review originally surmised. Opening track “Had To Hear,” though, is about being on the road and feeling frustratingly disconnected from that home life. In honor of the song’s impending release as a 7-inch single, director Richard Law has assembled a video of Real Estate traipsing around various Mexico City sites on tour and having what looks like fun. The clip’s good-time vibe cuts slightly against the song’s sentiments, but whatever, any excuse to listen to “Had To Hear” again is a good one.

Calle 13 - "Ojos Color Sol" (ft. Silvio Rodríguez) Video

Music video by Calle 13 feat. Silvio Rodríguez performing Ojos Color Sol. (C) 2014 El Abismo, LLC

She Keeps Bees - “Is What It Is” (Feat. Sharon Van Etten) Video

A month ago, She Keeps Bees shared the affectingly minimal “Is What It Is,” from their upcoming album Eight Houses, featuring Sharon Van Etten on backup vocals. The song seems made for lonely late-night drives, and the font of the title card for its new video, appearing above a car speeding down a darkened highway, immediately brings to mind the moody aesthetic of the film Drive. That’s where the similarities end, however — rather than neon violence, the Keith Musil-directed clip is full of subdued emotion and odd beauty, at once seeming both real and surreal as a young ballerina slips out the window and performs a dance routine atop her mother’s moving car.

Beck - “Heart Is A Drum” (Official Video)

Today, Beck releases the guest-heavy recorded version of Song Reader, his sheet-music album. That’s the second LP Beck has followed this year, following the elegantly bummed comeback album Morning Phase. And one of the many beautifully downcast songs on that album, “Heart Is A Drum,” now has a video from music-video hall-of-famer Sophie Muller. In the elegiac black-and-white clip, we see Beck haunted by images of his past, most of which take the form of characters from Beck’s iconic 20-year-old “Loser” video: The skull-faced grim reaper, the two astronauts, Beck’s own breakdancing and thrift-besuited 1994 self. Beck also comes face-to-face with his own childhood self. It’s a movingly, if cryptically, lyrical video, and you can watch.

Watch The 8-Bit Grunge Medley You Didn’t Know You Wanted

What if all the angst and aggression of grunge were filtered through the sound chips of the very same video-game systems those artists grew up on? It’s a question we’ve asked ourselves many, many times, but finally someone has done something about it. The Youtube channel Filthy Frackers has crafted an animated medley of grunge’s greatest hits, reworked so they could fit nicely on an NES and paired with some fun visuals (that’s 8-bit Kurt Cobain in the picture above singing “In Bloom”). It’s not hitting the masterpiece chiptune levels of something like Ducktales or Megaman 2, but it’s definitely fun to pretend this is what Rock Band would have sounded like had it come out in 1993.

Divorcee - “Absence And Presents” (Official Video)

Divorcee, a new project from Yoni Wolf and Anna Stewart, will release their debut EP next month. Wolf works as the producer in this setting, and is almost entirely silent, vocally speaking, with good reason. In addition to being the music-making side of Divorcee, he is also the ex-boyfriend of Stewart, and that relationship served as the lyrical foundation for many WHY? songs. Here, Wolf provides a sonic backdrop, while Stewart writes songs examining the couple’s relationship from her own perspective. Below you can watch the video for the single “Absence And Presents,” which finds Stewart singing in front of grainy home movies of the pair.

BANKS - “Beggin For Thread” (Official Video)

On her new single “Beggin For Thread,” the big-in-England singer-songwriter BANKS sounds something like a genetic fusion of Fiona Apple and James Blake, and I consider that to be high praise indeed. In the stark, intense, mostly black-and-white video for the track, we see BANKS on a soundstage, surrounded by interpretive dancers and at least one white horse. But the real reason to watch it is BANKS’ face. The way she stares down the camera is pretty fucking impressive.

Connections - “Beat The Sky” (Official Video)

Last month, we premiered “Beat The Sky,” a new track from the prolific Columbus band Connections. Now they’ve shared the new song’s video, which is your typical band-playing-a-show montage that’s elevated by the group’s energetic and earnest punk, and some cool-looking cloud-related effects.

Hilary Duff - "Chasing The Sun" (Official Video)

Music Video by Hilary Duff performing Chasing The Sun (C) 2014 RCA Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment

Music Blues - “The Great Depression” (Official Video)

Music Blues is the solo project of Stephen Tanner, bassist for sludge metal stalwarts Harvey Milk. His debut album, Things Haven’t Gone Well — written after the death of a longtime friend, drummer Jerry Fuchs — is coming next month. We’ve already heard first single “91771,” and “The Great Depression” is another slab of ominous heaviness. The song begins with a high drone that descends into portentous guitar noise, builds to a crushing crescendo, and then abruptly drops out, riding a slow, uneasy groove to its conclusion. The split-screen video appropriates and juxtaposes seemingly disconnected clips of entertainment and violence, crafting a disturbing collage of cultural detritus. Nothing about this looks or sounds happy.

Turn To Crime - “Can’t Love” (Official Video)

Ex-Awesome Color frontman Derek Stanton’s new project Turn To Crime released their crunchy post-punk debut earlier this month. The band was formed after Stanton moved back to Detroit, and it makes sense that the city that inspired him would feature prominently in the video for “Can’t Love,” which mostly consists of quick cuts of snowy footage shot during what the band called “the coldest winter anyone can remember.” That footage is intercut with beautiful anonymous love letters submitted by people in the Detroit area, helping to establish a mood that goes well with the music.

Strand of Oaks - "Same Emotions" (Official Video)

Not too long ago, Timothy Showalter, who records as Strand Of Oaks, released an intense and deeply satisfying rock album called HEAL. And after making videos for the album tracks “Goshen ’97” and “Shut In,” he’s got a new one for “Same Emotions.” This one works as a mini-horror movie, with Showalter playing a vampire pimp who helps a trio of lovely bloodsucker ladies lure a few coked-up bros to their doom.

The Lees of Memory - "We Are Siamese" (official vide

The Lees Of Memory are a superb new Tennessee shoegaze trio comprising ex-Superdrag members John Davis and Brandon Fisher plus Nick Slack, who drummed for another Davis-fronted band called Epic Ditch. They’ve just signed to SideOneDummy and will release debut album Sisyphus Says this fall. The lead single is “Sisyphus Says,” a song that shows an almost supernatural understanding of the sonic trickery that made Loveless such a game-changer. If you squint, you can hear traces of good old-fashioned American rock ’n’ roll under the ethereal swell. But yeah, mostly it’s just expertly executed shoegaze. For the video, director Elvis Wilson shot the band around producer Nick Raskulinecz’s Rock Falcon, Tennessee compound and applied heavy visual effects to match the music. Raskulinecz appears in the video on bass to honor his massive contributions to the record.

Karen O - “Rapt” (Official Video)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs leader Karen O is going to release Crush Songs, her first-ever solo album, in a couple of months, and this morning marks the first time we get to hear anything from it. First single “Rapt” is a short, skeletal, lo-fi acoustic number, the sort of thing that could almost serve as a drawn-out intro to a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song. And its dreamlike new video, directed by Karen’s husband Barney Clay, is made up entirely of shots of Karen floating underwater, with her makeup somehow remaining immaculate. Karen’s Stop The Virgens collaborator, the Oscar-nominated production designer K.K. Barrett, also worked on the video.

Movement - “Ivory” Official Video (NSFW)

“Ivory” is a delicate, lush, rippling spaced-out quasi-R&B song from the Australian trio Movement, and in its floaty wooziness, it’s pretty clearly a sex song. The French directing team Fleur & Manu, who have made some amazing videos for M83, have pushed that idea way beyond its natural conclusion in their new “Ivory” video. The entire video is a French couple fucking, and it’s about as NSFW as a music video can get without actually being straight-up porn. Things turn to astral psychedelic out-of-body fare as the video progresses, but even then, it’s about fucking. Watch it below, but take that NSFW warning seriously.

2 Chainz - “Freebase” (Official Video)

A couple of months ago, 2 Chainz released the deeply fun EP-length Freebase mixtape. And after making videos for “Trap Back” and “They Know,” he’s gone full ridiculousness and turned his video for the title track into a parody of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” 2 Chainz directed the video himself (or, at least, I’m assuming “Dos Cadenas” is him), and he wears the same red-and-black leather jacket that MJ wore in the original video. And while 2 Chainz doesn’t do the “Thriller” dance, which obviously would’ve been ideal, he does put on the cheap zombie makeup, which is something, anyway.

Katy Perry - “This Is How We Do” (Lyric Video)

Katy Perry - “This Is How We Do” (Dir. IKYWTrouble)

Those fonts! Those ’80s video-arcade graphics! Those letters flying through space! But seriously, those fonts!

Future - “Coupe” (Official Video)

Future’s contribution to the Adult Swim Singles Series, “Coupe,” arrives with an animated video in which Future street races the devil. It’s a cartoon because Adult Swim, get it? Get it!

clipping. - “Story 2″ (Official Video)

The experimental rap group clipping. have a few recurring themes on their two albums. They always start with an “Intro,” they end with a mind-melting sound collage, and they both include a very disturbing “Story.” In the case of the band’s new album, their debut for Sub Pop, “Story 2″ is not a pleasant listen, and it’s been chosen for a new video following the curb-stomping surrealism of “Work Work.” In his review of the album, Tom hit the nail right on the head by comparing to Throbbing Gristle what consists of “a deeply fucked up narrative track about a working stiff who returns home to find his children burning to death.” And that’s what you get in this video, with one slight rule. The entire thing, from start to finish, films the man’s feet, walking and then gradually picking up in speed as he begins to realize what’s happening, and finally stumbling to a stop and collapsing on the sidewalk in front of the orange glow. I’d like to say that just seeing the feet makes all of this less upsetting, but it doesn’t really.

Woods - “New Light” (Official Video)

The prolific and consistently great Brooklyn folk rockers Woods released their latest album, With Light And With Love, earlier this year. Some of the band’s album covers have featured sketches from frontman Jeremy Earl, and his sketches have now been animated by organ/piano player John Andrews in a mesmerizing video for “New Light” that gives life to Earl’s simple line drawings.

Benoit & Sergio - “Your Darkness” (Official Video)

Right now, the D.C.-based deep-house duo Benoit & Sergio are working on an album that’s being co-produced by Darkside’s Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington. Before they get to that, though, they’ll release their new Your Darkness EP. The video for the thumping, wistful title track is a sort of moving love letter to the city of Tokyo in the 1980s, and it’s full of drab, workaday images the things you might’ve seen there — the crowded commuter trains, the schoolkids in uniforms, the fascinating architecture, the crowded nightclubs where people actually wore suits. Kateb Habib directed the video.

Jeremih - “She Know It” (Feat. Chi Hoover) Video

The Chicago R&B smoothie Jeremih, alongside producer Shlohmo, is half of the tandem that put together the No More EP, one of the year’s better free mixtapes. But that tape came out only a week ago, and Jeremih has already snapped back into solo mode. His as-yet-untitled third album is due this fall from Def Jam, and first single “Don’t Tell ’Em” absolutely bangs. And now he’s announced that he’ll release Not On My Album a new mixtape of stuff that we shouldn’t look for on that LP, next month. Given that Jeremih’s last solo tape was Late Nights, an excellent slow burner, this is good news indeed. The first track we’ve heard from the tape is “She Know It,” a casually badass collaboration with the Chicago rapper Chi Hoover, and it’s already got its own low-budget penthouse-party video from directors Kevin & Tionne.

The Gaslight Anthem - “Get Hurt” (Official Video)

Jersey rockers the Gaslight Anthem will release their new album Get Hurt next month, and the album’s title track, which we posted a little while back, is a surprisingly Killers-esque turn for a band who used to occupy the middle ground between Bruce Springsteen and Social Distortion. The song’s brand-new video takes place in one of those run-down dive bars where all the half-asleep drunks get up and start interpretive dancing as soon as the chorus kicks in. It ends, as it must, with a pretty lady collapsing into feathers. It’s pretty silly!

The Drums - “Magic Mountain” (Official Video)

Last week, the Drums released “Magic Mountain,” their first song in two years, and now they’ve shared a video to go along with it. Stylishly directed by the band members themselves and filmed in black and white by Gorjan Lauseger, the video sees the boys standing sullenly in the woods, dressed in armor and with a sword, presumably on their way to go to some sort of “magic mountain” and maybe fight a dragon or something. The video also inexplicably contains a dedication to late actress Elizabeth Taylor.

Chelsea Wolfe - “The Waves Have Come” (Official Video)

In February, Chelsea Wolfe teased an hourlong film called Lone with a clip for the song “Feral Love” off her 2013 album Pain Is Beauty. The film is directed by Mark Pellington, who is also responsible for Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” video and the movies Arlington Road and The Mothman Prophecies. Now, Wolfe has shared another clip from the film featuring the song “The Waves Have Come” and it’s just as beautiful and unsettling as the first. 

Statement via V Magazine:

Most of this video is footage from the first time Mark and I shot together — he had built this dark room full of green ivy and it was just me, the dress from the album cover, a few lights, and him. It was the first time I realized what a director really is. Suddenly he was shouting, guiding me with instructions, emotions, telling me to act as if everything I was singing about — disaster and the loss of life and love — that it was all inside of me and at the same time to act as an observer of these things. He cut it together with found footage of families, intense nature and destruction and created this cathartic journey through it all.

The whole movie is available now on USB and will be released digitally in the fall.

Museum Mouth - “Just Friends” (Official Video)

Earlier this year, North Carolina’s Museum Mouth put out Alex I Am Nothing, a blustering and smart concept album about an unrequited and obsessive crush. And much like a crush, the album becomes more and more appealing as you turn it over in your head. “Just Friends” is one of the many highlights, a sludgy punk plea for attention. The video for the song is one of the most subtly weird things you’ll see all year. Grainy video is superimposed with a creepy, big-lipped creature with a wide-eyed, terrified stare that looks close to how I imagine myself when trying to approach someone I like for the first time.

Lily Allen - “As Long As I Got You” (Official Video)

In the intro for her new “As Long As I Got You” video, Lily Allen explains that her trip to the Glastonbury Festival was a special one. The last time she played the festival, she got together with her husband, and now she’s got two kids with him. Allen’s new album Sheezus is her first in five years, and it’s already yielded plenty of videos, but none of them are as straight-up fun as this one. The video, which Chris Sweeney directed, captures Allen beaming as she traipses around the Glastonbury grounds. Also of note: The song has both a Bo Diddley beat and an accordion, neither of which is exactly common currency in 2014 pop music.

Iceage - “The Lord’s Favorite” (Official Video)

Danish punk Iceage released their last album You’re Nothing just last year, and today, they’ve already returned with a new song, a slurry and falling-apart rockabilly number called “The Lord’s Favorite.” The track comes with a new video. More than any other Iceage video, this one gets a lot of mileage out of the fact that the band’s members are extremely handsome young men, and it’s full of undertones of sticky and vaguely transgressive sexuality. There’s no new-album news yet, but the band promises “more new music coming soon,” and they’ve also announced a North American tour. Below, check out the video, which Cali Thornhill DeWitt directed.

Pharrell Williams - “Come Get It Bae” (Feat. Miley Cyrus) Official Video

Pharrell acts as a photographer at a fashion shoot in the video for “Come Get It Bae,” which is his next single from G I R L. Miley Cyrus, who contributed vocals to the song, also shows up about halfway through in a goofy outfit. And maybe I’m reading too much into things, but even though Pharrell ostensibly is singing as himself when he says, “I can see it the way you like/ I can do anything you need,” it still feels a little gross to see those words accompanied by girls dancing suggestively for the camera when we’re not so far removed from all of the Terry Richardson controversy, especially with Miley featured in the video. For someone who is usually pretty conscious of how he comes across, it seems like a bit of a misstep for Pharrell. Also for a video that starts with the words “Beauty has no expiration date” superimposed on the screen, it sure features a lot of twenty-somethings.

Helado Negro - "I Krill You" (Official Music Video)

Electronic musician Roberto Carlos Lange will soon put out Double Youth, his new album under the long-running moniker Helado Negro. We’ve already heard the new single “I Krill You” (which somehow wasn’t already used as a title by the band Krill), and now he’s shared a video for the song. Blending glittering streamers, footage of forests, flashing blue lights, and closeups of Lange singing, it all melts into an impressionistic whole that fits the song well.

Bleached - “Poison Ivy” (Official Video)

Yesterday, the tough L.A. garage-poppers Bleached released their three-song For The Feel EP; we posted the title track a little while back. The band has a new video for their sneery, catchy EP track “Poison Ivy.” It captures their performance on the pilot of the Check Yo Ponytail TV show’s pilot episode, as well as what happens when the old-timey TV showing that performance doesn’t work quite right. Jesus Rivera directed the clip, and you can watch it below.

Team Spirit - "Teenage Heart" (Official Video)

The former Passion Pit member Ayad Al Adhamy now leads the explosive garage rock quartet Team Spirit, and their sophomore album Killing Time comes out in a couple of months. Al Adhamy has a double role in the band’s gory new video for their giddy single “Teenage Heart“; he plays a sadistic doctor and the patient who becomes the victim of said doctor’s zeal. The whole thing is a cartoonish pile of guts, complete with the obligatory sexy nurse, and Dorian Tocker is the party responsible for directing it.

Infames - "Y es así" (Official Video)

Infames Video Oficial Y ES ASÍ

© 2014 Indie Records
Composed by Infames
Director : Eduardo Salvatierra
"Y es así " by Infames
Intro: Devendra Banhart

Producción : Trilogía Studios
Masterización : Glen Vargas
Santa Cruz de la Sierra

Joyce Manor - “The Jerk” (Official Video)

California’s Joyce Manor’s third studio album, Never Hungover Again, comes out today, and it’s full of those happy-sad riffs that define classic emo. Relative newcomers to the scene, Joyce Manor’s sound would nonetheless fit snugly amongst their predecessors on this list, had they been around a decade or two ago. “The Jerk” is one of the new album’s strongest tracks, clocking in at a characteristically brief 1:46, and is cheerily plaintive from beginning to end. The video, a grainy mishmash of handheld camera footage, is as visually wistful as the song’s keened chorus.

Future - “T-Shirt” (Official Video)

Future seems to be on a mission to make videos for every one of the songs on Honest, his very good sophomore album. And the new video for the miasmic, thudding “T-Shirt” follows in the footsteps of the low-budget clips for “Blood, Sweat, Tears” and “Side Effects.” This one is a day-in-the-life sort of thing, and it follows Future from an airplane to a drug house, a shoe store, his house, and the stage at Birthday Bash, Atlanta’s biggest annual rap show. There are a few rapper cameos in there, too.

YG - “Bicken Back Being Bool” (Official Video)

YG’s debut album My Krazy Life remains, for my money, the best rap full-length of 2014 by a whole lot, and one of the great things about it is the way it weaves its big, obvious singles into its rich tapestry. The Compton gang-slang headknocker “Bicken Back Being Bool” feels more like an album track than a single, but like so much of what this guy does, it’s catchy as all hell, so maybe it’s not a surprise that it’s got its own video now. Director Alex Nazari starts things off with a long spoken-word fire-and-brimstone sermon, and he piles on the local Compton atmosphere before everything explodes into a gun battle.

TEEN - “Tied Up, Tied Down” (Official Video)

“Tied Up, Tied Down” was one of the best songs off TEEN’s recent album, The Way And Color, and now it has been paired with a music video, directed by Jordan Michael Blake, which approaches the tropes of teen love with the same surreal, psychedelic twist as the band gives to R&B. It follows a trio of identically dressed teen girls and a trio of boys who pair off and do things that teens do like make out, smoke cigarettes, drink milk (?), beat each other up in boxing matches until they vomit blood (??), and eventually turn into portals to outer space (???). The video tumbles further down the rabbit hole until the summer day shifts to night and things come to a haunting conclusion. Watch it below.

Basement Jaxx - “Never Say Never” (Feat. ETML) Video

About a month ago, UK dance duo Basement Jaxx shared the towering disco-house track “Never Say Never,” the third single from their upcoming album Junto. Today, it’s been given a spectacularly insane video thanks to writer/director Saman Kesh. In a world where 72% of humans have stopped dancing, Jaxx Industries sets out to “stimulate the world to dance again” by inventing and perfecting the Bluetooth-enabled, iTunes sync-able TW3RK-BOT, complete with self-lubricating, machine-washable Jaxx Buttocks. Pre-order yours today! You can watch the appropriately dramatic video below. (NSFW-ish, depending on how acceptable robot butts are. There are also a couple of human butts in there, so watch.

Lucki Eck$ - “Ouch Ouch” Video (Dir. FKA twigs)

Lucki Eck$, an 18-year-old rapper from Chicago, released his debut mixtape last year. “Ouch Ouch,” produced by British singer FKA twigs, comes from his forthcoming mixtape BODY HIGH. FKA twigs also directed and starred in the video, a creepily hypnotic clip of what looks like either a séance or demonic possession shot on glitchy, grainy VHS tape.

Spoon - “Do You” (Official Video)

Spoon are back this summer with the fantastic They Want My Soul, a bright and lively dispatch from one of indie rock’s greatest bands. The excellent single “Do You” now has a video by Hiro Murai that finds Britt Daniel sporting a head wound and driving a station wagon through an apocalyptic Los Angeles with a lady in the backseat. Watch it below and stick around for the curious reveal at the end.

“Weird Al” Yankovic - “Mission Statement” Video

 “Weird Al” Yankovic specializes in broad, silly one-joke songs, whether they’re parodies or not, and he’s been releasing videos for them for the entire past week. With his new album Mandatory Fun out, Yankovic has shared seven videos in the past week, and some of them, “Tacky” in particular, have been great. But on the eighth and final day of the campaign, he’s shared a video for his most layered and pointed song. “Mission Statement” is a Crosby, Stills & Nash pastiche, but the lyrics are made up entirely of buzzword-heavy boardroom corpo-speak. And so the song works on the idea that the change-the-world ideas that the singer-songwriters used to sing about now take the form of tech billionaires figuring out ways to pile up more money. Pretty depressing! The animated clip is mostly a lyric video, made up entirely out of cartoony whiteboard drawings, and you can watch it at The Wall Street Journal, a media outlet that basically exists to bolster the kind of talk that Yankovic lampoons here.

Röyksopp & Robyn - “Do It Again” (Official Video)

Earlier this year, the Swedish pop queen Robyn and the Norwegian production duo Röyksopp got together to release the collaborative mini-album Do It Again. And though they’ve already dropped a video for their song “Sayit,” they didn’t really go for it visually until they made their brand-new video for the title track. Director Martin de Thurah filmed the “Do It Again” video around Mexico, and though Robyn and Röyksopp are in the clip, they’re really just bit players in a much bigger story. The blown-out black-and-white clip tells a big story about partying in the face of oppression.

Eddie Vedder Covers “Imagine” In Case You Missed His Open Letter

After Eddie Vedder declared himself anti-war and quoted John Lennon’s “Imagine” in an open letter last week, he covered the famously anti-war song for the first time during a solo show in Portugal on Friday night. Before the song began, he said, “I think it is the most powerful song ever written. Which is why I have never played it. It seems like maybe there is a reason to play it. If you’d like join me or use your voices or hold a light there might be some people out there that need to know they are not alone.”

“Weird Al” Yankovic - “First World Problems” Video

The weekend may be here but “Weird Al” week marches on. His latest video is a Pixies pastiche and sees him ranting about “First World Problems,” like not being able to fast forward commercials during live TV and his barista not bothering to make a foam design on the top of his vanilla latte. “I told [director Liam Lynch] that I didn’t want to be myself; I wasn’t Weird Al in this video — I was kind of like this douchey character,” he told PopCrush. “So we thought, ’OK, we’ll find you a douchey blonde wig … [which was made of] real human hair … and I tried it on, and it fit, and we had fun with it!” Watch the video over on Popcrush and watch two interviews with “Weird Al” below where he talks about the making of the video and the process of writing parodies.

“Weird Al” Yankovic - “Lame Claim To Fame” (Official Video)

Today’s Weird Al fix is the video for “Lame Claim To Fame.” It’s a parody in the style Southern Culture On the Skids, which is a band that I didn’t think was big enough to justify a parody. The song sees Weird Al recounting his chance encounters with celebrities, including Steve Buscemi, Steven Segal, Jonah Hill, and more.

Braid - “Bang” (Official Video)

Braid’s comeback album, No Coast, was released a few weeks ago and was actually pretty good, recapturing the old days without feeling like they were clinging onto the past. Now, the first reunion song we heard back in May has a well-produced video to go along with it, featuring a lot of sparklers and set in the dream (or nightmare?) of a little girl who seems to have fallen asleep in the grass.

Conor Oberst - “You Are Your Mother’s Child” (Official Video)

The last Upside Down Mountain video we got was set in a dystopian sci-fi world, but the new one for “You Are Your Mother’s Child” is a much gentler affair, full of sweetly nostalgic imagery and adorable kids.

Juicy J - “Scholarship” (Feat. A$AP Rocky) Video

Last year, Juicy J promised to give away a twerking scholarship, and then he gave a girl a $50,000 scholarship for non-twerking reasons. Today, he’s made a video for “Scholarship,” a song about paying strippers’ tuition money. It’s a theme for him! The song features A$AP Rocky, and it comes from last year’s Stay Trippy album. The murky new video has a whole lot of Juicy and Rocky spending time with young ladies with busy asses. But the video’s worth watching mostly for its sense of atmosphere, something videos like this usually throw to the side. It seems like a fine distinction, but it makes a difference if you shoot on location at a strip club rather than inviting a bunch of girls to a green-screened studio.

“Weird Al” Yankovic - “Sports Song” (Official Video)

On the back of his new album Mandatory Fun, “Weird Al” Yankovic recently promised eight videos in eight days, and thus far, he’s actually overdelivered. Earlier this week, we saw his videos for “Tacky,” “Foil,” and “Handy,” as well as his lyric video for “Word Crimes.” Last night, he was on Conan, and his performance was honestly great enough that it should qualify as his video for the day. But that’s not good enough for him! So now he’s also made a video for “Sports Song,” which isn’t a parody of anything but which is instead Yankovic’s take on the entire idea of the sporting fight song. In the video, we see Yankovic leading a marching band across a football field and singing about all the ways in which his team will beat your team, with a few qualifying asides thrown in there. As with everything this guy does, it’s both so dumb and so brilliant.

Erlend Øye - “Garota” Video

Erlend Øye is best-know for his work in a couple of groups, the possibly-broken-up Kings Of Convenience and the definitely-broken-up Whitest Boy Alive, but he’ll release his solo album Legao later this year, and we’ve already posted the early track “Fence Me In.” In Øye’s new video for the sophisticated, lushly funky solo song “Garota,” we see him visit Seoul and meet a lovely young lady, develop an attraction, and then get pulled away because he’s an international recording artist and he’s got shit to do. It’s all terribly romantic and beautifully photographed by director Michael Beech. We also see Øye play a stadium-size show in Seoul. Is Erlend Øye just crazy popular in South Korea? Because if he is, that’s awesome.

Ultramantis Black - “Biomonster DNA” (Official Video)

Ultramantis Black is a pro wrestler and, for more than a decade, a standout in the great Pennsylania-based wrestling indie Chikara Pro. More recently, he’s become a recording artist, one who just released an EP of frantic blitzkrieg hardcore (with members of Pissed Jeans backing him up) on the metal giant Relapse. We’ve posted his song “West Siberian Path,” and now he’s got a video for “Biomonster DNA,” another minute-long thrash-out. In the clip, we see Ultramantis in action, in ecstatic slow motion, against fellow Chikara wrestler Ophidian (who you might remember from this). Joe Stakun directed the video, and it’s awesome.

Lusine - “Arterial” (Official Video)

Lusine is best known for his abstract but highly melodic electronic music, and soon he’ll release the new EP Arterial. Now he shares Christophe Thockler’s video for the EP’s title track which uniquely plays into that musical contrast. With tight, dramatically lit shots of computer motherboards, chips, and other electronic devices that gradually drip blood, it feels both mechanical and organic, blending with Lusine’s track, which is choppy and mechanized until a bit of human voice drops in now and then. I was so fascinated by the video I reached out to director Thockler for some sort of a comment only to learn that the video contains absolutely zero digital effects. Everything was done using stop-motion animation built from about 7,000 pictures and live footage. The melting near the end was done with a heat gun, and even the credit sequence is shot entirely live on an old glitching computer. Oh, and some of that blood you’re seeing is real blood.

Perfume Genius - “Queen” (Official Video)

A couple of days ago, Perfume Genius announced the new album Too Bright and shared the stark, powerful first single “Queen.” Mike Hadreas, the man who performs as Perfume Genius, has said that the album represents a confident, confrontational embrace of queer identity and of the effects it can have, and that sure as hell comes through in the video, which is a truly great piece of work. Cody Critcheloe, the man behind the performance-art pop project SSION, directed the video, a surreal masterpiece that starts with Hadreas playing a street hustler and jumps into the unknown from there. The video has pigs, smashed computers, giant shrimp dinners, a one-legged Elvis impersonator, and a troupe of cheerleaders celebrating a suicide. It demands to be picked apart.

Here’s what Hadreas says:

I’ve seen faces of blank terror when I walk by. Sometimes from seemingly strong, macho dudes — somehow my presence confuses and ultimately scares them. There is a strange power to it that I’ve only recently begun to understand and embrace. After many years trying to sort out exactly what they are scared of, most of the time converting the result into personal shame, there are now moments of monstrous pride.

(via the Matablog)

Marvin Gaye with Studio Rio - "Sexual Healing" (Official Video)

Music video by Marvin Gaye with Studio Rio performing Sexual Healing (video). (C) 2014 Sony Music Entertainment

Hiss Golden Messenger - “Lucia” (Official Video)

M.C. Taylor, the North Carolina roots-folker who records as Hiss Golden Messenger, has steadily built up a cult audience for seven years and four albums, but he seems poised to cross over to something bigger with his forthcoming album Lateness Of Dancers, his first for Merge Records. We’ve already heard “Saturday’s Song,” the LP’s first single. Now Taylor has shared a video for “Lucia,” another song from the album. It’s not really a straight music video; rather, it’s grainy footage of Taylor playing the song on a front porch somewhere, with no accompaniment and seemingly no overdubs. It’s a powerful song, and Taylor’s presence is strong enough that you barely notice the lack of music-video trickery.

“Weird Al” Yankovic - “Handy” Video (Iggy Azalea Parody)

“Weird Al” week continues! Amazing human being “Weird Al” Yankovic just released his new album Mandatory Fun, and he’s already shared videos for the Pharrell parody “Tacky” and the Lorde spoof “Foil,” as well as a great lyric video for his Robin Thicke skewering “Word Crimes.” And now it’s come time, inevitably, for him to take on Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX’s unstoppable pop juggernaut “Fancy.” The result is “Handy,” in which Yankovic puns impressively, for three minutes, about how he’s good at fixing stuff. If you guessed that the song would include a “glue dat, glue dat” line, pat yourself on the back. The video has dancing carpenters and “Weird Al” in, for some reason, a blonde wig and a fake mustache. Also, you may notice Eddie Pepitone as the customer. It rides its one joke impressively.

Iggy Azalea - Fancy (Explicit) ft. Charli XCX (Official Video)

Directed by Director X

Music video by Iggy Azalea performing Fancy. (C) 2014 Virgin EMI Records, a division of Universal Music Operations Limited

Lust For Youth - “Running” (Official Video)

Swedish electronic group Lust For Youth released International, their third studio album, last month. The group has morphed over the years from the solo project of producer Hannes Norrvide into the proper trio they are today. Their sound’s changed as well, from their earlier industrial music to honest-to-goodness synth pop. “Running” is fairly twinkly, duo-chrome red and blue — also inscrutable. And the video delivers the same sentiment. The band’s hanging out in maybe-Japan with a bunch of youths in a bowling alley. Or is it a karaoke bar? Or it’s a karaoke bar that moonlights as a bowling alley. At any rate, the music fits.

Saint Pepsi - “Fiona Coyne” (Official Video)

Saint Pepsi recently put out “Fiona Coyne,” his bright musical love letter to a fictional character on Degrassi, and now the song has been given an equally head-over-heels video, directed by Matt Walker. It follows a lonely man as he moves through his day and everyone seems to be part of a happy couple except for him. Eventually he sees a girl and attempts to make something happen. It’s a stylish enough video and a cool concept, but there’s one other element here. I’m not really sure why, but the guy has a pet disco ball. As in, a sentient disco ball that helps him get his breakfast and follows him on his adventures. Sometimes it deflates and he has to play music to help keep it strong. It’s bizarre and awesome and now I want a disco ball for a pet. You will, too.

The Underachievers - “Metropolis” (Official Video)

The video is all evocative tour footage, with lots and lots of weed smoke floating around the frame. Watch it at  Nah Right.

alt-J - “Hunger Of The Pine” (Official Video)

How fast can you run when your body is shot full of arrows? That’s the question that the hero of alt-J’s “Hunger Of The Pine” video faces. The British trio is preparing to release their much-awaited sophomore album This Is All Yours, and they brought Nabil, the greatest music video director currently working, in to helm the video for their shivery, Miley Cyrus-sampling first single. The clip follows a young man who’s on the run, pursued by mysterious bow-hunting producers, and it ends with one of those searing images Nabil is known for. The videos isn’t one you’ll forget anytime soon.

Cam’ron - “So Bad” (Feat. Nicki Minaj & Yummy) Video

Nicki Minaj hinted at a collaboration with R&B singer August Alsina this week, but that has yet to material. Instead, we get a Nicki duet with Cam’ron called “So Bad” that is in actually quite good. Nothing monumental here, but Yummy provides an effectively hooky chorus, the bouncing midtempo beat is right in Cam’s wheelhouse, and both rappers seem to be having fun. The playful, low-budget video finds Cam goofing off in front of a green screen and attempting to purchase property from Minaj.

Simian Mobile Disco - “Tangents” (Official Video)

A few weeks ago we heard “Tangents,” the pulsating new song from Simian Mobile Disco’s upcoming fourth album, and now there are some interesting visuals to go along with it. They were created by visual collaborators Jack Featherstone and Hans Lo by “feeding live generated digital content through an oscilloscope, filming the oscilloscope’s screen, then further processing the image produced,” which is the same technique that also produced the album’s cover. It makes for a hypnotic and mesmerizing video that starts out with just a few abstract dots before degenerating into colorful glitch-art by the end of the song.

Avi Buffalo - “So What” (Official Video)

Long Beach indie rockers Avi Buffalo have been quiet in the four years since they released their self-titled debut, but they’re back soon with the new LP At Best Cuckold. In the new video for first single “So What,” frontman Avi Zahner-Isenberg wakes up on a beach and follows a pretty girl across different landscapes and into situations that make no sense. Been there, dude. Jon Jon Augustavo directs.

Dizzee Rascal & Fekky - “Still Sittin’ Here” Video (NSFW)

Original grime breakout star Dizzee Rascal is still famous in the UK, mostly because he rapped on some silly EDM hits, but he first made his name making some very hard and very weird music. Dizzee released Boy In Da Corner, his stunning debut album, over a decade ago, and if you listen to it now, it still sounds like the future. On the new track “Still Sittin’ Here,” Dizzee and fellow grime rapper Fekky go in over a track that samples “Sittin’ Here,” the opening track from Boy In Da Corner, and you might still get that shock-of-the-new adrenaline rush from it. Also of note: Dizzee can rap, something that bears repeating. The “Still Sittin’ Here” video is NSFW thanks to one naked lady, but it’s mostly a frill-free black-and-white rap throwdown.

Magic Hands - “Limousine” (Official Video)

Alex Badham and Lucy Roleff, two Australians who met in Germany, comprise the duo Magic Hands. Their intriguingly titled Let Me Hold You While You Fail arrives in September, and today they unveil the video for lead single “Limousine.” The song is a duet that splits the difference between Purity Ring’s beat-driven synth music and Magnetic Fields’ deadpan baroque chamber pop. (Just wait until Badham’s vocal enters halfway through and you’ll see what I mean.) Its video, meanwhile, stars Hana Dawson and Jack Traylen as supernaturally gifted dancers whose heated rivalry turns violent. It’s an excellent clip for an excellent song.

Vic Mensa - “Feel That” (Official Video)

Feel That prod. by Smoko Ono
Directed By: Calmatic
Video Produced By: Nick Dunlap
Director of Photography: Noel Maitland
Visual Effects: Alchemical Response Team
Production Company: Bigger Better Media

Hot Sugar - “Your Nails Look So Pretty” (Official Video)

Nick Koenig, aka Hot Sugar, has made a name for himself with his unique production work, but only now is he getting ready to release his debut solo album, God’s Hand. Before that, however, he’ll release the Seductive Nightmares 7″ which includes the A-side “Your Nails Look So Pretty,” a song that provides the delicate soundtrack to this surreal video he’s directed. It follows Koenig on a strange journey as he is woken up by a pair of masked children and walks through a series of increasingly odd settings. Much like his music, though, the strength of the video comes from the attention to detail: the recurring images of snails; picking up the spider marble only to have a series of spiders appear later; the way he gently puts his hand up when the two kids impatiently try to grab at their meal of gummy worms. It’s made even better that he does all of this with the somnambulant calm of someone who hasn’t had their morning coffee yet.

The New Pornographers - “War On The East Coast” (Official Video)

Last month, New Pornographers released the first single from their forthcoming Brill Bruisers, its awesome title track. Today we get its second offering, “War On The East Coast” — sung and presumably penned by Dan Bejar — along with a video directed by Thom Glunt. Of the video, New Pornos frontman A.C. Newman said, “We were going for some mid-nineties second-tier Britpop attitude. In the past, I’ve never really wanted to be in the video. But with this, we wanted to have fun and fully be IN the video.”

“Weird Al” Yankovic - “Foil” Video (Lorde Parody)

The latest in Weird Al Yankovic’s eight-videos-in-eight-days Mandatory Fun rollout plan is “Foil,” his parody of Lorde’s “Royals.” What begins as a celebration of preserving leftover food spirals into a conspiracy theory anthem — tin foil hats, see? Patton Oswalt guests as a video director with a secret and The State/Reno 911! guys Tom Lennon and Ben Garant have cameos as shadow government operatives.

Wild Child - “Rillo Talk” (Official Video)

Since this became a viral video, the use a 360 rig of GoPro cameras seems irresistible for music video directors. The new video for indie-pop group Wild Child’s “Rillo Talk” pulls it off well because they choose to employ the effect in some very visually pleasing settings. As you watch, you’ll see the band move through various relaxing activities from a pool to skatepark to a relaxing drive with each shot warped by director Aaron Brown to appear as though it takes place on its own special little planet.

RL Grime - “Core” (Official Video)

RL Grime has long been one of the most colorfully inventive producers in bass music, lending a playful spirit to his trap, hip-hop, and dubstep productions without losing sight of the boom. He’s readying a full-length album for later this year, and lead single is “Core” is steeped in airhorn synths, frisky digital drums, and cavernous bass drops. “Who do the shit that I do?” goes the hook — and, well, lots of people do it, but few do it so well. Meanwhile, directors David Rudnick and Daniel Swan have given “Core” some badass helicopter-centric digital animation.

Merchandise - “Enemy” (Official Video)

Directed by Tim Saccenti.

Lykke Li - “Gunshot” (Official Video)

Lykke Li’s new video for “Gunshot,” a searching power ballad from her I Never Learn album, is a stark and striking thing. In the video, Lykke looks like a wraith, with corpsepaint makeup and an ill-fitting trench coat, and she dances expressively across a burnt-out apocalyptic parking lot. There seems to be some kind of shantytown there, and she encounters colorful characters — bloodthirsty little kids, girls who seem to twerk compulsively, dirtbike trick riders — without seeming to notice any of them. Maybe the video is some kind of extended heartbreak metaphor, and maybe it all just looks cool. Either way, you can watch.

“Weird Al” Yankovic - “Word Crimes” Video (Robin Thicke Parody)

National treasure “Weird Al” Yankovic, in a clear effort to dominate this week’s 5 Best Videos Of The Week countdown, is in the midst of releasing eight new videos in eight days, all to promote his new album Mandatory Fun. Things started yesterday, with his amazing and cameo-heavy video for the Pharrell parody “Tacky.” Today, he follows it up with a masterfully assembled lyric video for “Word Crimes,” which transforms Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” into a slightly priggish grammar lesson. Yankovic, you see, is taking a stand against Twitter English. He’s also doing a nice take on Thicke’s smarmy falsetto and credibly delivering his version of T.I.’s verse, as well. The end result is, as you can probably imagine, a lot of fun. Lyric videos don’t generally appear on the 5 Best Videos countdown, but when the anthropomorphic Microsoft paperclip showed up, my stance began to weaken.

Jenny Lewis - “Just One Of The Guys” Video (Feat. Anne Hathaway, Kristen Stewart & Brie Larson)

Later this month, Jenny Lewis returns with The Voyager, her first solo album in six years. It’s really great. You’ll like it if you like things that are great. Lewis directed her own video for “Just One Of The Guys,” the Beck-produced lead single. And to play her backing band, she put together an enviable lineup of movie stars: Anne Hathaway, Kristen Stewart, Brie Larson. (Lewis herself is also a movie star of some note; word to The Wizard.) In the colorful clip, all the ladies dress up in mustaches-plus-tracksuits dirtbag drag, making me wonder if there are actually any dudes who fit quite this stereotype. Working theory: They’re all pretending to be members of Korn. It’s a fun and poignant video.

Ab-Soul - “Hunnid Stax” (Feat. Schoolboy Q & Mac Miller) Video

Black Hippy colleagues Ab-Soul and Schoolboy Q mostly get together to make supremely zooted party anthems, and “Hunnid Stax,” from Ab-Soul’s new album These Days…, certainly fits the bill. Director Adam Roberts has filmed the two of them, as well as an unbilled and barely-conscious-looking Mac Miller, at the sort of party where girls in their underwear throw money at each other — you know, the kind of party that definitely happens in real life. If you’ve ever wanted to see a rap video that looked like a mid-’00s American Apparel photo shoot, here you go; it’s below.

Mark Lanegan Band - “Sad Lover” (Official Video)

Mark Lanegan is arguably the owner of indie rock’s finest haggard, smoky groan, and he released his old-timey covers album Imitations less than a year ago. This fall, he’ll follow that up with the new album Phantom Radio. And before he even gets to that, he’ll drop the new vinyl-only EP No Bells On Sunday. One of its songs is the big, gleaming, krautrock-laced “Sad Lover,” which reminds me of turn-of-the-millennium Primal Scream more than anything else. Its new video is mostly footage of scenery whizzing by, like what you’d see if you stared out the window of a fast-moving car or train.

Mark Lanegan - “I’m Not the Loving Kind” (Official Video)

This past week, Mark Lanegan released Imitations, his album of old-timey covers. The video for his version of John Cale’s “I’m Not The Loving Kind” follows a haunted, leathery cowboy — a figure even more grizzled than Lanegan himself, if you can even conceive of this — as he trudges through the neon absurdities of Las Vegas. It’s a striking video.

Duke Dumont - “Won’t Look Back” (Official Video)

UK pop-house producer Duke Dumont is finishing up his debut album, and today, he’s shared the video for single “Won’t Look Back.” It’s a straight-faced chase sequence involving two of the most ridiculous methods of transportation possible, as criminals wearing horrifying rubber masks rob a jewelry store and showcase some impressive pogo-stick skills while fleeing from a surprisingly effective Segway cop.

The Afghan Whigs - “Matamoros” (Official Video)

If you live in New York, you’re probably used to seeing roving crews of young street-dancers taking over subway cars, staging acrobatic performances, and then asking for money. You may even be annoyed at it. If you’re from out of town, though, the first time you see one of these things it’s like catching a glimpse of a unicorn in the wild. It’s wondrous. And with mayor Bill de Blasio’s police force cracking down on the dance crews, it’s cool that alt-rock heroes Afghan Whigs have shows some solidarity with the kids. The band’s new video for “Matamoros,” a tough and funky song from their recent reunion album Do To The Beast, captures skull-faced performances from the dance crew W.A.F.F.L.E. and makes the whole spectacle look crazy exciting. Philip Harder directs.

Weird Al - “Tacky” Video (Pharrell Parody)

In the YouTube era, Weird Al’s shtick isn’t so novel anymore. The songs he spoofs on his 14th album Mandatory Fun — “Happy,” “Royals,” “Fancy,” “Blurred Lines,” etc — have already been parodied on the Web. But Yankovic realizes that he’d be better off with a more timely release strategy, not beholden to the LP format. The new album is the last under his RCA contract and he tells NY Post he’ll likely pursue digital self-distribution, Louis CK-style. “The album format doesn’t seem to be the best for my stuff,” he admits. Still, Mandatory Fun is enjoyable, especially on the first listen, and “Tacky” (his remake of Pharrell’s chart-topper “Happy”) is a highlight. The video features Yankovic along with comedians Aisha Tyler, Margaret Cho, Eric Stonestreet, Kristen Schaal, and Jack Black all dancing in garish outfits. Not sure why there is no #PharrellHat cameo. But watch it below via Nerdist, who point out that it was filmed in the space that was Julianne Moore’s apartment in The Big Lebowski.

Hamilton Leithauser - “I Don’t Need Anyone” (Official Video)

Hamilton Leithauser - I Don't Need Anyone (Official Video)

Director: Paul Maroon
Director of Photography: Dorottya Hegedus-Lum
Assistant Director: Kevin Lum
Assistant Photographer: Nicholas Arnaud Dufrechou
Assistant Photography: Russel Zimmerman
Color/Finishing: Kevin Barker
Edited at La Moutique
Christopher Colbert, in the role of a lifetime, plays himself

Hamilton Leithauser: Vocals
Paul Maroon: Electric and Acoustic Guitars / Organ
Richard Swift: Drums
Morgan Henderson: Bass / Marimba / Percussion
Ellis Ludwig Leone: Strings
Rob Moose: Strings
Keats Deiffenbach: Strings
Nathan Schram: Strings
Anna Stumpf: backing vocals

Written by Hamilton Leithauser & Paul Maroon
Recorded at Vox Studios, Los Angeles, CA and Plymouth & Adams, Brooklyn, NY
Engineered by Michael Harris
Produced by Hamilton Leithauser & Paul Maroon
Mixed by Craig Silvey assisted by Eduardo de la Paz at Toast Studios, London, UK

Sharon Van Etten - "Our Love" (Official Video)

Sharon Van Etten’s new video for “Our Love,” a song from her recent album Are We There, is an intimate and sexy kind of thing — almost entirely in black-and-white, shot in that soft morning light, with tons of implied humping. We see SVE and a companion waking up together, but we only see hands brushing ankles or tattoos in extreme close-up, all of it languid and inviting. The video follows clips for the Are We There songs “Taking Chances” and “Every Time The Sun Comes Up,” and it leaves a deeper impression than either of those. On a Monday morning, it’s a helpful reminder that you’d be having a better day if you’d just decided to stay in bed. Karen Collins directs.

SZA - “Julia” Video (NSFW-ish)

SZA’s had a busy week — after releasing a song for DJ Kitty Cash and a collaboration with Jill Scott, here’s the video for “Julia,” her third single from her debut album Z. The video sees her wandering around empty rug warehouses and looking moody in the backseat of a car. It also features a woozy, ambient outro called “(Tender)” at the end, which could be an outtake from her Z recording sessions or a hint at new material.

Ka - “Still Heir” (Official Video)

Ka might be the closest thing we have to a real-life Ghost Dog. We should treasure him and his contemplative, noiry visions. Dir. Ka & Preservation

Midnight Masses - “Broken Mirror” (Official Video)

Midnight Masses is the side project of Autry Fulbright and Jason Reece of …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead who will put out their new album Departures this month. Now you can watch the video for “Broken Mirror,” a duet between Fulbright and Hayley Dukle of Dirty Projectors. The clip incorporates the two singing while cutting to lush water imagery and some kaleidoscopic visual distortions. Of the song Fulbright says, “I wanted to make a song that might’ve been sampled by someone like J-Dilla. I felt Haley’s voice is a unique instrument and she approached the song as a ghostly love song about star-cursed lovers.”

Adult Jazz - “Idiot Mantra” (Official Video)

British quartet Adult Jazz are known for their genre-blending eccentricity. The band’s new short film/music video, titled Community Rhythms, features the song “Idiot Mantra” and is set in a school gym, with frontman Harry Burgess (who’s actually a grade-school teacher in his spare time) leading a drum circle. The band asks the initial question, “How many people can you fit in the back of a van?” and answers, “A great many,” followed by tribal beats and a heady falsetto from Burgess.

Neko Case and Kelly Hogan - "These Aren't the Droids" Video (Starring Ellie Kemper)

On “These Aren’t The Droids,” a song from the comedy-and-music benefit compilation 2776, Neko Case and her longtime collaborator Kelly Hogan lamented the idea that dorked-out dudes are going to decide what the future is. And the brand-new video has fun with that idea, with Hogan dressed as Chewbacca and Case playing some kind of Princess Leia/Enterprise crewmember hybrid. Ellie Kemper, who played Erin on The Office, stars as a woman fed up with her no-good deadbeat Stormtrooper husband. Tom Gianas and the Levinson Brothers directed the video.

The Faint - “Scapegoat” (Official Video)

Dance-punk vets the Faint released their first album in nearly six years this past spring, the appropriately titled Doom Abuse. Their new video for “Scapegoat” carries the same vibes as the music, beginning as a claustrophobic basement rave scene that will at random moments accelerate to dizzying fast-motion as quickly as it will just freeze in place. It makes for a video that’s as chaotic as an amusement park ride, and you can watch.

Busdriver - “Ego Death” (Feat. Aesop Rock & Danny Brown) Video

A couple of weeks ago, the motormouthed L.A. rap expressionist Busdriver lined up fellow underground rap originals Aesop Rock and Danny Brown for a dense, wordy throwdown called “Ego Death.” In making the song’s video, director Strangeloop has congured a dystopic computer-animated vision in which a robot wanders abandoned street and encounters rapping specters. The three rappers get their own cartoon avatars; Brown, for instance, is a tooth-chipped floating skull with a virtual-reality headset, which seems about right.

Interpol - "All The Rage Back Home" (Official Video)

Interpol have shared the video "All The Rage Back Home", which is the lead track from the forthcoming El Pintor. It was co-directed by singer Paul Banks and Sophia Peer.

Zammuto - “Great Equator” (Official Video)

When we first heard former Books member Zammuto’s new single, “Great Equator,” it came with a fascinating clip showing how he created glitchy beats directly via damaging and recording vinyl records. In the new video for that song, we see a bit of that once again, as the camera zooms in to get microscopic views of different objects like pennies, computer chips, and tiny record grooves that are blown up to the size of canyons. Not really sure why, when it gets to the hook, it cuts to images of different animals, but that’s not an important question when the hook is as catchy and strange as this. Watch it below.

Donnie & Joe Emerson - “Big Money” Video (Feat. Ariel Pink & Dâm-Funk)

Song by Donnie & Joe Emerson
Directed by Lydia Hyslop
Cinematography by Theo Burtis
Produced by Katharine Relth
Executive Producer: Light In The Attic

Blood Orange - “High Street” (Feat. Skepta) Video

“High Street,” a soft and emotive collaboration with the veteran London grime rapper Skepta, was one of my favorite songs from Blood Orange’s great 2013 album Cupid Deluxe. And now, as part of the ongoing music video series from the online fashion retailer SSENSE, Lucy Luscombe has directed a low-key and pretty video for the song. In the clip, Dev Hynes and Skepta wander thoughtfully through London and link up in a double decker bus depot. It’s a great chance to rediscover a truly special song you may have forgotten or missed.

Christopher Owens - “Nothing More Than Everything To Me” (Official Video)

Directed by Max Minghella, 'Nothing More Than Everything To Me' is the first single from the upcoming album 'A New Testament'

Royal Blood - "Figure It Out" (Official Video)

Produced by Royal Blood & Tom Dalgety
Recorded by Tom Dalgety

Director - Ninian Doff
Producer - Sarah Park
Production company - Pulse Films

Cayucas - “Will The Thrill” Video (Feat. Michelle Branch)

Cayucas recently dropped an album called Bigfoot, so it’s only fair that they’d include the great Sasquatch in at least one of their videos. “Will The Thrill” follows the furry guy as he puts on his best jacket and rides his bike in the summer heat to meet his date (played by Michelle Branch) at the movie theater. There’s a laid-back ease to the whole thing that fits with Cayucas. He doesn’t rush, she’s not mad he’s late, and everybody feels pretty good by the end. You will too. Also, looking at the movie titles on the marquee, I’m really hoping they see The World’s End instead of The Butler.

Lil Silva - “Mabel” (Official Video)

The London producer Lil Silva is getting ready to release his solo EP Mabel, and we’ve posted its title track, an elegant bass-pop ode to Silva’s grandmother. Its video, from director Laura Coulson, is a series of portraits of kids in what looks like a small English town, and it lingrs affectionately on their faces as they play soccer or ride bikes or wait for the bus. It’s a pretty video for a pretty song.

Majid Jordan - “A Place Like This” (Official Video)

Having co-produced one of Drake’s most memorable hits, “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” Canadian duo Majid Jordan set their sights on fame of their own this year, with their debut EP, A Place Like This. The title track is all smooth, sweet falsetto paired with booming bass, illuminated by club lights. You hear the same downtempo dreaminess that made Drake’s song so successful, and they’re alike in sentiment. It won’t be too surprising if “A Place Like This” achieves similar acclaim.

Jungle - “Time” (Official Video)

The British pop-funkers Jungle already made a fun and dance-centric video for “Busy Earnin’,” their breakout single, and now they’ve topped it with the clip for “Time,” the big follow-up. Oliver Hadlee Pearch directed the new video, and it stars a pair of middle-aged men with rubbery limbs who absolutely throw the fuck down. It’s a deeply enjoyable video.

Cloud Nothings - "Psychic Trauma" (Official Video)

Cloud Nothings’ great 2014 album Here And Nowhere Else is packed front to back with potential singles, and today, it’s got another actual single in the form of “Psychic Trauma,” the video for which has just been released. Directed by John Ryan Manning, it’s a pretty standard performance clip except for its severely warped texture, which gives it a weird pseudo-3D effect and helps to emphasize the song’s kinetic qualities.

Jessie Ware - “Tough Love” (Official Video)

The great British soul singer Jessie Ware returned a couple of weeks ago with “Tough Love,” her elegantly devastating new single. That track’s video has arrived, and it plays like a European experimental film from the early ’70s. The clip is full of ravishing golden-hour images of the back of Ware’s head, film that changes from color to black-and-white, and close-up images of plant life and underwater faces. It’s not an attention-grabbing video, or even a particularly notable one, but it’s all arranged around the song, which still kills.

White Lung - “In Your Home” (Official Video)

Directed and produced by Justin Gradin & Ben Jacques.

White Lung’s great Deep Fantasy is one of the year’s real highlights, and I feel like it’s got a good shot to stay in that vicinity come year end. The band just released a surrealistic, dreamlike (as in it literally reproduces dream imagery) new video for album track “In Your Home,” and while the clip is kinda unsettling, the song still kicks ass.

Yoko Ono & Yo La Tengo Glastonbury Video Goes Viral For All The Wrong Reasons

At Glastonbury a week and a half ago, Yoko Ono played a set with Yo La Tengo backing her, a big event for fans of way-out music. Ono is 81 years old and still capable of slashing through any noise around her, and this is badass. And a video of Ono and Yo La Tengo performing a heavy-groove version on her 1969 Plastic Ono Band B-side “Don’t Worry Kyoko” has gone viral, gaining a million more hits than any of the BBC’s other Glasto videos. That should be good! Unfortunately, it’s gained that audience thanks to posts like this and this, and to the prevailing dumbshit idea that Ono is the talentless weirdo hack who broke up the Beatles. If you can watch the performance and think she was trying, and failing, to do something more conventional, I honestly don’t know about you. Watch the performance below, and maybe leave a nice YouTube comment to offset some of the blood-boilingly terrible ones.

Ka - “Still Heir” (Official Video)

Last year, the meditative Brooklyn rapper and producer Ka self-released the dark and absorbing The Night’s Gambit, one of last year’s best rap albums. This year, he followed it up with his 1200 B.C. EP, which isn’t even available digitally. If you wanted it, you had to mail-order the thing and wait for the CD to show up. Ka, then, naturally hasn’t done much promotion for it, but he’s finally made a video for one of its songs. “Still Heir” is the rare Ka song that Ka didn’t produce himself. Preservation produced it and also co-directed the video with Ka. The clip is atmospheric black-and-white noir, with Ka looking mythic against various New York backdrops.

Mapei - “Change” Lyric Video

The genre-dissolving pop singer Mapei’s album Hey Hey is coming this fall, and today she’s shared a lyric video for the single “Change.” The song itself is a rush, using rhythmic bombast and exultant synth glimmers to turn vague platitudes about life, love and personal agency into inspiring universal calls to arms. For the video, directors Phillipe Grenade and Jarret Egan of Fortune Films took a page from Bob Dylan’s iconic “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video, filming residents of New York City’s five boroughs holding pieces of cardboard with the lyrics to “Change” scrawled across them.

Tweedy - “Summer Noon” (Official Video)

Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy recently formed Tweedy, a new duo with his drumming son Spencer, and Sukierae, their debut album as a group, is coming out in a couple of months. We’ve heard their first single “I’ll Sing It,” as well as live versions of a couple of other songs, and now they’ve made their first music video. Director Allison House’s computer-animated clip follows a red balloon as it drifts along a shoreline and through a desert, and it’s not much to look at. But it’s somehow still an nice visual complement to the song, which ambles amiably, am extended roots-rock sigh.

Paul McCartney - “Early Days” Video (Feat. Johnny Depp)

Someone needs to inform Johnny Depp that hanging out with ancient, beloved rock stars does not make you cool. Depp didn’t automatically become cool by getting Keith Richards cast in that one Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, and now that he’s shown up in three recent Paul McCartney videos, that doesn’t make him cool, either. Depp was already in McCartney’s videos for “My Valentine” and “Queenie Eye,” and now he’s in director Vincent Haycock’s video for “Early Days,” a song from McCartney’s 2013 album New. Depp’s role in the video is, to be fair, just a brief cameo. Mostly, the black-and-white clip follows the story of two young blues musicians in some idealized version of the midcentury South.