DJ Snake & AlunaGeorge - “You Know You Like It” Video (NSFW)

The slinky British electro-soul duo AlunaGeorge had their greatest success when they teamed up with Disclosure on “White Noise,” so maybe that explains why they’re making a bunch of songs with really, really successful dance-music types. They’ve already teamed up with Baauer (and Rae Sremmurd) on “One Touch.” And now they’ve joined forces with DJ Snake, whose “Turn Down For What” is going to be one of those songs that will give the world 2014 flashbacks for decades, on a new single called “You Know You Like It.” Actually, though, “You Know You Like It” isn’t a new song; it’s a DJ Snake remix of a single that appeared on AlunaGeorge’s 2013 album Body Music. For whatever reason, though, it’s being billed as a collaboration. And now it has a video that, naturally, tells the story of a disturbed, drug-dealing, Instagram-stalking ape. Pretty good video! It’s NSFW for a strip-club scene.

Pussy Riot - “Witches Of Pussy Riot Clean Manezhka” (Officlal Video)

The once-incarcerated Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina spent much of this year in the U.S., where they visited Colbert, took the stage at Vice20, and filmed a cameo on House Of Cards. They’re now back in Russia, and their group just shared a new video called “Witches Of Pussy Riot Clean Manezhka,” in advance of a massive protest that will come to Moscow’s Manezhka Square tonight. The Russian government has tried and imprisoned the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his brother Oleg, and that’s the reason for the demonstration. In the video, we see members of Pussy Riot putting on makeup and gowns and sweeping Manezhka Square while a tense minute-long electro-punk song plays.

Broken Social Scene - “Golden Facelift” (Official Video)

“Golden Facelift” is a song that Broken Social Scene recorded during the sessions that gave us 2010′s Forgiveness Rock Record. But they didn’t share it until this month, when it was part of Broadsheet Music: A Year In Review, a compilation put together by the Canadian newspaper The Globe And Mail. The comp attempts to address the events of the past year, and in sharing “Golden Facelift,” Broken Social Scene write that “2014 has not been without its beauty, but it has also been a year of incredible brutality and all of humanity has a great deal to answer for.” You certainly get that sense from the song’s new video, a found-footage collage that juxtaposes staggering images of natural beauty with footage of various fucked-up human things happening right now: Police clashing with protesters, plastic-surgery disasters, Jian Ghomeshi. A lot of it is hard to watch.

Dej Loaf - “Blood” (Feat. Young Thug & Birdman) Video

Detroit rapper Dej Loaf has shared a video for her Young Thug and Birdman featuring track “Blood,” which shows up on her Sell Sole mixtape that we named one of the best rap releases of the year. The camera slides around constantly while it follows the three of them standing on top of a building, at a hazy party, and in a darkened hallway.

Grimes - “Christmas Song II (Grinch)” (Feat. Jay Worthy) Video

While I spent Christmas begrudgingly making small talk with family members I see once a year, Grimes was busy writing a song and making a music video alongside her stepbrother, rapper Jay Worthy. “Christmas Song II (Grinch)” serves as a sequel to a song they teamed up for that was released as a bonus track for Visions. In a Tumblr post, she emphasizes that “this is NOT a single from the upcoming album, not a serious piece of art in any capacity and not an official grimes release.” The video features Grimes in a retro Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt, wielding an axe, wearing a gas mask, and laying on top of a piano at a family gathering. The track — which was made in less than two hours — has Jay Worthy rapping, Grimes riffing on “’Twas The Night Before Christmas,” and a spoken word outro featuring some of Amy Pascal’s emails/freeform poetry from the Sony leak. Watch the video and read some words from Grimes below.

happy holidayz

first off this song contains swearing so it might not be all ages 
Anyway – i like to periodically release songs since my album is taking so long and i make a lot of songs that i wouldn’t put on an album but i nonetheless enjoy so thats what this is.  
me and my step bro jay worthy make an annual christmas song with our siblings in order to avoid obligatory dinner. this is NOT a single from the upcoming album, not a serious piece of art in any capacity and not an official grimes release 
also —made this song in prob less than 2 hours so please excuse my terrible production, + it is not mixed or mastered. 
xxx


C

Watch The National Make Melancholy “Christmas Magic” For Bob’s Burgers

I have a hard time thinking of a band that makes me sadder than the National, which means that I can’t think of a band less equipped to write a Christmas jingle. Bob’s Burgers has hosted the band several times in the past, featuring them on two Thanksgiving specials singing dour songs about turkey murder and gravy boats. There is something deeply humorous about watching an animated Matt Beringer sing the moody “Christmas Magic” while hanging from a Christmas tree dressed like an elf.

Watch An 11-Year-Old Björk Tell The Nativity Story On Icelandic TV

In 1976, an 11-year-old Björk participated in a Christmas special for Icelandic TV station RUV in which she read the nativity story while accompanied by music played by students from the Reykjavík Children’s Music School. The program was recently rebroadcast by the channel, and a Reddit user points out that it has now made its way online. The special was made a year before she released her little-known debut album, which came out 16 years before her official Debut. You can watch the whole thing on the RUV website.

Fiesta Cuetillo - Pacoman (Official Video)

Fiesta Cuetillo - Pacoman
Disco: Funkymetro
Director: Eduardo Aguilera
Asistente de dirección: Marco Antonio Aguilar

Agradecimientos especiales a: Niko Andrade, Rolando Aparicio, Carolina Balcazar, Flia. Balcazar Rodriguez, Blauh! (David Sandoval), Iván Bustamante / Apolo (perro), Centro De La Cultura Plurinacional Santa Cruz (Silvana Vasquez), Pablo Cossio, Pedro De Urioste, Horny Monkey, Ciro Hoyos, Pick Media Rental, Yayo Prada, Marcos Roman, Ivana Troche.

Para conocer más de Fiesta Cuetillo ingresa a:
www.fiestacuetillo.com
www.facebook.com/fiestacuetillo
Twitter: @fiestacuetillo

The 40 Best Music Videos Of 2014

 

Next year, YouTube will celebrate its 10th anniversary. For nearly a decade, then, music videos have belonged almost entirely to the internet. Once upon a time, video directors made their work for TV, expecting you to run across their images when you were flipping through channels. By the time YouTube hit its second year, that was out the window. People were making videos without any expectation that they’d ever be on TV, and that meant an entirely different set of rules and aims and ideas. That’s been the case for long enough, now, that the internet music video has developed its own auteurs, filmmakers with bodies of work that can compete with what Hype Williams or Mark Romanek once did. In the past few years, the internet music video has even found its Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, the brilliant minds who reshaped the form.

Nabil and Hiro Murai are two of the greatest music video directors we’ve ever seen, and both are peaking right now, making stunning videos with freaky regularity and developing their own visual and narrative sensibilities. 2014, for these two, feels a bit like 1997, the year Gondry came out with “Around The World” and “Bachelorette” and “Everlong,” finally equaling what Jonze was doing and maybe beating him at his own game. Nabil has dominated for the past few years, but he only shows up three times on this list. Murai is on there four times, and he’s got the highest spot on the list. He’s the head music video director in charge right now. Someone needs to let these two make their Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. (Grant Singer is on the list three times, as well, so throw him in that group as the Chris Cunningham.)

This list is entirely generated by one person, and that person is me. The list reflects my tastes and ideas and predilections. It’s not objective, and there’s no way it could be. Plenty of worthy and important videos did not make the list, and it might look different if I made it again tomorrow. I switched the #1 and #2 videos back and forth as I was writing it, and I might switch them back again if given a chance. But every one of the videos on the list below is worth your time.

40. Childish Gambino – “Telegraph Ave” (Dir. Hiro Murai)


A beautifully shot tropical love story suddenly becomes a genuinely unsettling monster movie, and I suddenly find myself wishing this was an entire feature.

39. Municipal Waste – “Miserable Failure” (Dir. Whitey McConnaughy)


The new gold standard for every skate-metal video, from now until forever.

38. YG – “My Nigga (Remix)” (Feat. Rich Homie Quan, Lil Wayne, Meek Mill & Nicki Minaj) (Dir. Motion Family)


The formula for black-and-white posse cut videos hasn’t changed since Hype Williams Made “Flava In Ya Ear (Remix).” It doesn’t need to. Sometimes, rampant charisma and liberal use of slow-motion is all you need. Sometimes, it ain’t broke.

37. Steve Gunn & Mike Cooper – “Pony Blues” (Dir. Champ Ensminger)


There are lots of Ensminger could’ve gone with this atmospheric Americana hymn. I wouldn’t have expected “a beautiful and absorbing retelling of an old Thai ghost story” to be one of them, but that’s why I’m not a music video director.

36. Queens Of The Stone Age – “Smooth Sailing” (Dir. Hiro Murai)


If you’re at the bar and you see Josh Homme and a crew of drunk Japanese businessmen walk in, just leave. Trouble’s a-brewing, and you don’t want any part of it.

35. Ariel Pink – “Put Your Number In My Phone” (Dir. Grant Singer)


I am on record hating Ariel Pink and almost everything he does. But this video exists at some uncanny nexus between Lynch, Kubrick, and Clueless, and how could I hate that?

34. Disclosure – “Grab Her!” (Dir. Emile Sornin)


The British Office was a television classic, but it had one fatal flaw: I didn’t give David Brent superpowers. Finally, years later, someone has come along and fixed that oversight.

33. Phantoms – “Broken Halo” (Feat. Nicholas Braun) (Dir. Ace Norton)


I have never been to a wedding this interesting, and that bothers me.

32. Shamir – “On The Regular” (Dir. Antony Sylvester)


The late-’90s/early-’00s Busta/Missy hyper-cartoon aesthetic, used in service of a teeage Vegas club kid who suddenly looks like he’s about to be a huge, shining star.

31. Dizzee Rascal – “Pagans” (Dir. Emile Sornin)


Dizzee opens the video practicing kung fu while in the Van Damme splits, and that’s somehow the most sedate part of the whole video. I don’t know why we don’t get more videos where rappers deal martial arts death to faceless opponents. It’s not like this approach has ever yielded a bad video.

30. Skrillex – “Fuck That” (Dir. Nabil)


Starts as a beautifully photographed and weirdly understated showcase for the French-Moroccan character actor Saïd Taghmaoui. Becomes an underground fighting movie, a car chase, a mystical vision, and, ultimately, a piece of Wu-Tang Clan product placement. Bong bong.

29. Action Bronson – “Easy Rider” (Dir. Tom Gould)


Best cinematic barfight of the year, unless we’re counting the nightclub massacre from John Wick. Best cinematic acid trip of the year, without qualification. Best cinematic guitar solo of the year, and nothing else was close.

28. “Weird Al” Yankovic – “Tacky” (Dir. “Weird Al” Yankovic)


Goofy costumes, parody videos, and music-video celebrity cameos are all thoroughly played-out ideas. You could even say the same about long tracking shots. And yet “Weird Al” took all of these things and made them sing. There’s a reason he’s been here longer than most of us have been alive.

27. Le1f – “Sup” (Dir. Jesse Miller-Gordon)


Le1f has made consistently great videos since we first met him a couple of years ago. But he’s never found a look better than “apocalyptic sci-fi traveler.” He should maybe stick with that one.

26. Trash Talk x Flatbush Zombies – “97.92″ (Dir. APLUSFilmz)


It’s amazing how a new piece of technology — a 360-degree camera mounted on a drone — can make the world look like an entirely new, much cooler place.

25. Mark Ronson – “Uptown Funk” (Feat. Bruno Mars) (Dir. Bruno Mars & Cameron Duddy)


In which Bruno Mars figures out that the best — possibly the only — way to make himself look cool is to imagine a world in which circa-1986 Jonathan Demme had directed a movie about Morris Day & The Time.

24. Taylor Swift – “Blank Space” (Dir. Joseph Kahn)


There is a distinct possibility that Taylor Swift’s been a femme fatale this whole time, that she’s either just figuring it out now or we are. Either way, she just made her first-ever great video, so be afraid.

23. FKA twigs – “Video Girl” (Dir. Kahlil Joseph)


Worst thing about the Sony Pictures hack (other than everything else about it): The sad knowledge that nobody has yet floated the idea of a horror movie built around FKA twigs. These executives need to stop semi-illiterately threatening each other and start watching this video.

22. Sky Ferreira – “I Blame Myself” (Dir. Grant Singer)


Ferreira already did a nice job deflecting charges of racial weirdness in this particular video, so let’s all just hail her for bringing back the dancing-gangs video. That genre was away for far too long.

21. Garden City Movement – “Move On” (Dir. Michael Moshonov & Lael Utnik)


A story of love and loss, told so simply and filmed so beautifully that it comes out looking like one long filmic sigh.

20. Arca – “Thievery” (Dir. Jesse Kanda)


Sometimes, you twerk into the void. Sometimes, the void twerks back at you.

19. Nicki Minaj – “Pills N Potions” (Dir. Diane Martel)


Despair and attraction, hyper-stylized, with a cute bunny and a headless Game. If we want anything more from a Nicki Minaj video, we’re not being realistic. (We still got it, though. See #5.)

18. Ariel Pink – “Picture Me Gone” (Dir. Grant Singer)


There’s a cold sweep to Ariel Pink and Grant Singer’s two videos together. This is both the better and the more expansive of the two, and it tells a lovely story of human connection if and only if you can get around the galling creepiness of the whole latex-mask thing.

17. Warpaint – “Disco // Very” & “Keep It Healthy” (Dir. Laban Pheidias)


Charisma is a difficult thing to quantify. But the particular form of Californian girl-solidarity boho-stoner charisma on display in this video is a powerful force indeed.

16. Fucked Up – “The Art Of Patrons” (Dir. Andy Capper & Mike Haliechuk)


The tour-life stuff is great, complete and tangible in a way that tour-life music videos almost never are. But it’s the coming-home-to-kids stuff that knocks me dead.

15. Kiesza – “Hideaway” (Dir. Kiesza, Ljuba Castot & Rami Samir Afunik)


When a silly dance video is a masterfully executed silly dance video, it doesn’t really need to be anything else.

14. Real Estate – “Crime” (Dir. Tom Schapling)


The self-reflexive music video is a difficult thing to pull off. It helps to just pile on the ridiculousness. It helps even more to be Tom Scharpling.

13. Beyoncé – “7/11″ (Dir. Beyoncé)


Oh hey, Beyoncé apparently made this thing with just a GoPro and a selfie stick, possibly while drunk, in case you ever felt like you had any talent at anything.

12. Perfume Genius – “Grid” (Dir. Charlotte Rutherford)


History will show that, in 2014, Mike Hadreas saved glam rock forever, and that he did it by acting out extremely strange visions like this one.

11. Future Islands – “Seasons (Waiting On You)” (Dir. Jay Buim)


In a way, this video was a failure. The song was huge and omnipresent, and the video did nothing to shape its visual perception in the world at large. It would be hard for any video to overshadow the band’s incredible Letterman performance. But on its own merits, what a beautiful video — a rich and humane and sympathetic portrait of a family, and a lifestyle, and a part of America that never gets a chance to show up in music videos.

10. Bobby Shmurda – “Hot Nigga” (Dir. MainEFeTTi)


Kids bunch up on Brooklyn streetcorners, throw gang signs at cameras, rap over stolen instrumentals from established rappers. This isn’t exactly a new scenario. And yet this excessively low-budget burst of animosity was enough to get a hook-free mixtape freestyle into Billboard’s top 10 and to get major-label deals for not only Bobby Shmurda but also for Rowdy Rebel, who just dances in the background. Some of the credit goes to that great little Shmoney Dance interlude, the hat that flies into the air and never comes back down. Mostly, though, this is raw and unvarnished charisma of the sneering teenage variety. We could always use more of that.

9. Spoon – “Do You” (Dir. Hiro Murai)


Britt Daniel confronts apocalypse in exactly the way you’d hope, piloting his classic car through urban desolation and never adjusting his thousand-yard stare. Murai takes his time in revealing the exact nature of the apocalypse, and when it arrives, it’s maybe the single most weirdly joyous moment on this list.

8. FKA twigs – “Two Weeks” (Dir. Nabil)


The slow, languorous, unbroken pan-out was clearly the music-video camera move of the year, and it never got more rapturously strange than it did here. Music videos can make stars, or they can plunge us into a musicians’ dreamworld. Every once in a while, they do both.

7. Lydia Ainsworth – “Malachite” (Dir. Matthew Lessner)


Please, someone, make the nightmare-universe Step Up sequel that this video hints at.

6. HAIM – “If I Could Change Your Mind” (Dir. Warren Fu)


There’s probably a way to invoke instant joy more easily than showing people who don’t usually dance dancing really well. I just don’t know what it is.

5. Nicki Minaj – “Lookin’ Ass” (Dir. Nabil)


2014 may have given us no greater pop-feminist image than fishnet-catsuited desert princess warrior Nicki Minaj shooting two assault rifles at once, ripping up the sand dunes.

4. Freeway & Girl Talk – “Tolerated” (Feat. Waka Flocka Flame) (Dir. Allen Cordell)


The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” video was a classic, but it had one big issue. Richard Ashcroft just bumped into passersby. He never, say, ripped off a random assailant’s arm and then threw it to Waka Flocka Flame. Somehow, I never realized this was a problem until now.

3. clipping. – “Work Work” (Feat. Cocc Pistol Cree) (Dir. Carlos Lopez Estrada)


I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve watched this thing, and I still have no idea what it means. But try getting that hovering foot or that stumbling headless body out of your mind. You can’t.

2. Perfume Genius – “Queen” (Dir. Cody Critcheloe)


Pointed, identity-based surrealism so vivid and evocative that it can swallow everything up around it, pulling you along on whatever inexplicable thing it wants to do next. This one lingers.

1. Flying Lotus – “Never Catch Me” (Feat. Kendrick Lamar) (Dir. Hiro Murai)


In the couple of months since this video hit the internet, it’s somehow become even more poignant, as we’ve been treated to the image of police departments nationwide bristling at the idea that they shouldn’t be murdering unarmed black kids with impunity. Here, we see two black kids exuberantly and beautifully dancing their way out of their own funeral, and it’s enough to break your heart. Black lives matter, you assholes. Obviously.

Via: Stereogum. 

Kevin Gates - “I Don’t Get Tired” (Feat. August Alsina) Video

Kevin Gates waited until the year was almost over to release one of its best mixtapes. Luca Brasi 2, the new one from the Baton Rouge rapper, is a fearsome, cathartic piece of work, a powerful showcase for one of the greatest rappers we have working right now. Over the weekend, Gates shared the new video for “I Don’t Get Tired,” the mixtape’s lead single, a total banger that has a brief appearance from the R&B singer August Alsina. In the Jon J-directed video, we mostly just see Gates ambling around his hometown, rapping in tire shops and outside grocery stores. As uneventful as the video may be, it gets over because of Gates’ presence, which is a thing to witness.

The 20 Best Music Videos of 2014 (losinrocks)

20) OK Go – “I Won’t Let You Down” (Director: Kazuaki Seki and Damian Kulash, Jr. )


19) Little Dragon – “Pretty Girls” (Dir: Nabil)


18) Panda Bear – “Mr Noah” (Dir. AB/CD/CD)
 

17) She & Him – “Stay Awhile”


16) Röyksopp – “Skulls” (Dir: Stian Andersen & Röyksopp)


15) Spoon – “Inside Out” (Video edited by Mau Morgó. Photos by Todd Baxter.)


14) Mac DeMarco – “Passing Out Pieces” (Dir: Pierce McGarry)


13) tUnE-yArDs – “Water Fountain” (Dir: Joel Kefali)
 

12) Clipping – “Inside Out” (Dir: Carlos Lopez Estrada)


11) Ariel Pink – “Picture Me Gone” (Dir: Grant Singer)


10) The War on Drugs – “Under The Pressure” (Dir: Houmam)


9) alt-j – “Every Other Freckle” (Dir: Olivier Groulx)
 
> versión Girl 


> versión Boy


8.) Michael Jackson / Justin Timberlake – “Love Never Felt So Good”


7) Chet Faker – “Gold” (Director: Hiro Murai)


6) Pharrell Williams – “It Girl” (Dir: Mr. and Fantasista Utamaro)


5) Metronomy – “Month of Sundays”


4) Flying Lotus – “Never Catch Me” (Dir: Hiro Murai)


3) Philip Selway – “Coming Up For Air” (Dir: NYSU)

 
2) Paul McCartney – “Early Days”


1) Perfume Genius – “Queen” (Dir: Cody Critcheloe)



Bonus Tracks

a) Rick Ross (feat. Kanye West & Big Sean) – “Sanctified” (Unofficial Emoji Video)


b) Kim Gordon + Nirvana – “Aneurysm” Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The 10 Best Music Videos Of 2014 Of Argentina

10. Ignacio Herbojo – “Niebla” (Dir: ODΛ)


9. Lo Pibitos – “Sintonía” (Dir: Julian Pedro Gonzalez Diaz)


8. Mi Amigo Invencible – “Los pájaros” (Dir: Lucía Iglesias)


7. Fede Haro – “Yo sé” (Dir: Federico Haro)


6. Mariscal de Campo – “Dejame” (Dir: Mauro Quiroga) 


5. Diosque – “Una naranja” (Dir: Agustín Carbonere)


4. Babasónicos – “Aduana de palabras” (Dir:Juan Cabral )


3. Juana Molina – “Lo decidí yo” (Dir: Juana Molina & Mario Caporali)


2. Manuel Onís (con Martín Buscaglia) – “De los pelos” (Dir: Mario Caporali)


1. Los Reyes del Falsete (con Litto Nebbia) – “Los Niños” (Sebastián López)

Watch Nicki Minaj’s The Pinkprint Movie

Nicki Minaj has shared a narrative short film to accompany her new album. The Pinkprint Movie is separated into three acts that correspond with songs from the record: “The Crying Game,” “Grand Piano,” and “I Lied.” “All Things Go” plays over the opening credits. Executive producers include Minaj, Lil Wayne, Birdman, and music video director Nabil. It was directed by Taylor Cohen and Francesco Carrozzini, and stars Minaj, Willy Monfret, and Boris Kodjoe.

Sky Ferreira - “OMANKO” DIIV Home Video

Sky Ferreira’s Night Time, My Time promotional cycle just wrapped up, but her boyfriend made a video for one of the songs anyway. The boyfriend in question, DIIV’s Zachary Cole Smith, posted a lovingly assembled “home video” for album track “OMANKO” (the one about Japanese Christmas) and tweeted it out today. It seems to be a compilation of footage he shot throughout their travels together.

First Aid Kit - “Walk Unafraid” (Official Video)

Last month we heard First Aid Kit’s cover of R.E.M.’s “Walk Unafraid” from the new Reese Witherspoon movie Wild. (Incidentally, we also heard the Swedish folk duo cover Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” last month following the summer release of their album Stay Gold.) The video for “Walk Unafraid” features clips from Wild intercut with footage of First Aid Kid singing in the woods. It’s good to see the duo back in a magical forest where they belong, singing gorgeous harmonic covers.

Marilyn Manson - “Deep Six” (Official Video)

The video for Marilyn Manson’s crunching, seething new single “Deep Six” is about an undulating CGI black worm with Marilyn Manson’s face. Or maybe it’s about an undulating CGI black worm who swallows Marilyn Manson. Either explanation seems plausible. Also, that worm swallows a woman who doesn’t have any nipples. That’s pretty much all you need to know to figure out whether you should watch this strange and possibly upsetting video. Good song, anyway. Bart Hess directs.

La Dispute - “Woman (Reading)” Video

The clanging, expressive Michigan post-hardcore band La Dispute released a very good album called Rooms Of A House earlier this year, and they’re heading out on tour in a few months with like-minded road warriors Title Fight and the Hotelier. They’ve also just shared a video for the intense, slow-building “Woman (Reading).” Director Niall Coffey filmed dancer Julie Ann Minaai executing some impressive moves in various locations around London.

TV On The Radio - "Lazerray" (Official Video)

TV On The Radio released their fifth studio album Seeds earlier this year, and today the band premiered a video for the album’s song “Lazerray.” Directed by photographer Atiba Jefferson, the video includes a host of well-known pro-skaters including Eric Koston, Lance Mountain, Sean Malto, and Andrew Reynolds. TV On The Radio perform their song as we witness a day at the skate park.

Kitty - “Second Life” (Official Video)

Last month, Kitty released her Frostbite EP, and today she’s sharing a video for the stand-out track “Second Life.” The video, directed by the production company Many Hearts (the team of Jesse Gouldsbury and Johnny Weiss), stars the Brooklyn-based producer Maxo playing a Kitty-themed video game. It’s an impressive multimedia project that follows the rapper-turned-singer’s lovelorn narrative.

Screaming Females - “Ripe” Live Video (Dir. Lance Bangs)

New Jersey punks Screaming Females will unleash Rose Mountain early next year, a record that’s bound to be a total shit-kicker. We’ve already heard the single “Ripe,” and today the band shared a live performance of the song. Lance Bangs has directed an impressive roster of videos, the most recent of which was for Kim Deal’s new track “Biker Gone,” and he helmed the forthcoming Slint documentary Breadcrumb Trail. This is a high-contrast, stark video — the carefully coordinated cinematography rubs up against Screaming Females’ purposefully raw sound. Although the audio was professionally recorded, the band chose to not overdub it, maintaining some auditory semblance to a live performance. Maybe it always looks this way, but Marissa Paternoster’s guitar appears to be speckled with blood as she tears through the song’s absurdly awesome inaugural riff.

Future Brown - “Vernáculo” (Feat. Maluca) Video

Future Brown have followed up their magnificent “Talkin Bandz” with “Vernáculo,” another track from their recently announced debut album. The song is another genre-bending take from the production enclave and features NYC-based singer Maluca. It’s accompanied by a video that premiered at Art Basel earlier this month that serves as an indictment of the beauty industry. “Appropriating the advertising language of global beauty brands like L’Oreal and Revlon, ’Vernaculo’ is an exercise in capitalist surrealism,” the Perez Art Museum Miami explains. You can watch the video at their website.

Chumped - “December Is The Longest Month” (Official Video)

Brooklyn-based Band To Watch Chumped found their way into our hearts throughout 2014 by taking the risk to be explicit, and we named their debut album Teenage Retirement one of the best of this year. There’s a lot of complexity to be found on Teenage Retirement, but all of that complexity has nothing to do with challenging songwriting, and everything to do with the fact that relationships, friendships, and existence are all dauntingly difficult when you’re a young person living in the often very cold emotional vortex of New York City. So it comes as no surprise that Chumped would release a narrative video for “December Is The Longest Month,” the leading track off of Teenage Retirement. The video, directed by Andy Mendez, chronicles the aftermath of a party: We witness our protagonist attempting to fix a very broken, very sad snowglobe as she is hounded by flashbacks of the night before. There’s a lot of betrayal and heartbreak, but none of the situation seems all too tragic unless you’ve ever been in the midst of it. Watch the video at EW.

Pelican - “Deny The Absolute” (Official Video)

Chicago instrumental metal masters Pelican will play around with vocals on The Cliff, the new EP they’ll release early next year. Before they get to that, though, they’ve shared a video for “Deny The Absolute,” a rumbling six-minute jam from their 2013 album Forever Becoming. Kenneth Thomas directed the video, combining black-and-white live and behind-the-scenes footage from the band’s recent West Coast tour and combining it with ominous, atmospheric shots of roads and taxidermied animals.

St. Vincent - “Birth In Reverse” (Official Video)

St. Vincent has shared a video for “Birth In Reverse,” a track off of her self-titled record from earlier this year. Annie Clark has had a fantastic year, and she stands preternaturally tall in the video, acting as de facto goddess ruling over the whole world and taking her insane guitar-playing skills up into a starry galaxy. The video, directed by Willo Perron, is intercut with some Terrence Malick-esque shots of the sky and also sees Clark in a confined graph paper-style room. It’s gorgeous.

Laura Marling - "Short Movie" (Official Video)

‘Short Movie’ – the new album from Laura Marling.

In 2013, the British folk singer Laura Marling released Once I Was An Eagle, one of those albums that sneaks up on you, where you might not realize how good it is until it’s been in your life for a few months. Early next year, she’ll follow that one with a new album called Short Movie. The album’s title track, which Marling just shared, is a pretty great hard-driving indie-folk song with a confident build to it. The song comes packaged with a pretty Art & Graft-directed animated video about a horse running across the desert.

Google - Year in Search 2014

In 2014 we searched trillions of times. What do these searches say about us? Explore the Year in Search http://www.google.com/2014 and follow the conversation on #YearInSearch

Pond - “Sitting Up On Our Crane” (Official Video)

Tame Impala offshoot Pond are releasing their sophomore record, Man It Feels Like Space Again, at the beginning of next year, and they’ve just shared a video for a new track from it called “Sitting Up On Our Crane.” The video follows a 3D figure as he dangles off the edge of a crane and eventually falls into a psychedelic vortex before landing in a digitized Pangea. The track mimics the uneasiness songwriter Jay Watson would get when visiting empty construction sites during his youth: “We’d sit at the top and I’d always be afraid that we were gonna fall off, kill ourselves. That’s what the song is about. Kind of an anxiety power ballad,” he explained. The video was directed by Alejandro Miguel Justino Crawford.

Tink - “Around The Clock” (Official Video)

Tink is poised to become rap’s next big thing, especially now that Timbaland has taken her under his wing. But if “Around The Clock” proves anything, it’s that she doesn’t need anyone’s help. “I never heard the word declined/ All I think about is time, I need it ’round the clock,” she spits on the hook surrounded by sardonic putdowns like “Nothin’ I hate more than a nigga with bitch tendencies/ That’s like 99% of y’all” and “Tell them broke boys get the fuck from around me.” The video is shadowy and hypnotic, and Timbaland hangs around in the background showing off his find. Charlamagne Tha God provides some spoken word background to set the scene. “Tim dropped the beat in the studio and it instantly gave me a hip-hop vibe,” Tink told FADER. “I wanted the video to match that same feeling. Raw and simple.”

Watch Alt-J Perform “Every Other Freckle” and “Left Hand Free” On Kimmel

 “Every Other Freckle”

Alt-rockers Alt-J released their sophomore album, This Is All Yours, a few months back, and they made an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel last night to perform two tracks from it. They did “Every Other Freckle” and “Left Hand Free” on Kimmel’s massive outdoor stage.

“Left Hand Free”:

Rae Sremmurd - “Up Like Trump” (Official Video)

The Kriss Kross-looking Mississippi rap kids in Rae Sremmurd are the young kings of naggingly catchy club-rap, and the second the nunchucks show up in their new “Up Like Trump” video, you know you’re in for a pretty good time. Rae Sremmurd are going to release their Sremm Life debut on the first Tuesday of the New Year, and they’ve followed up their Nicki Minaj/Young Thug collab “Throw Sum Mo” with a clip in which the two young men take on New York City. They hang out with models and Mike Will Made-It and a guy dressed like Batman. They (clumsily) swing the aforementioned nunchucks. They do choreographed dance moves. The rap universe is richer for having these kids in it, and you can watch their video.

YG - “2015 Flow” (Official Video) + Stream YG Blame It On The Streets EP

YG released “2015 Flow,” from the soundtrack to his short film Blame It On The Streets, just in time to protest egregious Grammy snubs for himself and close collaborator DJ Mustard. Now the song has an extremely compelling video that matches Mustard’s ominous minimal production, amplifying the song’s power on the strength of YG’s gripping charisma alone. Watch, and look out for Mustard’s cameo at the end.

Ghostface Killah - “Love Don’t Live Here No More” Video (Feat. Michael K. Williams)

About a week ago, Ghostface Killah released a new album called 36 Seasons, a narrative rap-opera piece about a masked vigilante out for revenge. At the beginning of the story, on the song “Love Don’t Live Here No More,” Ghostface’s character returns to his neighborhood after nine years and tries to pick back up with his old girlfriend. In the song’s new video, Michael K. Williams, most famous for playing Omar on The Wire, plays the lead, acting out Ghost’s scenario and making it look creepier than it sounded on-record. (He also has the most violent day in the recent history of beautiful Park Slope, Brooklyn, where this sort of public beatdown no longer occurs often.) Ghostface himself is in the video, too, but he’s not playing his own character; he’s just saying hi to Williams and reading an old Iron Man book. Dan The Man directed the video.

Skrillex - “Dirty Vibe” Video (Feat. Diplo, G-Dragon & CL)

Before Diplo and Skrillex got together to form their new duo Jack Ü, they collaborated on “Dirty Vibe,” a track from Skrillex’s 2014 album Recess. The song also features the K-Pop stars G-Dragon (of BigBang) and CL (of 2NE1), two people who have way more batshit charisma than just about anyone in Western pop music. The new “Dirty Vibe” video pretty much works as a showcase for G-Dragon and CL, both of whom wear insane clothes and pose and preen in various unlikely settings. There’s also a painted-black dancer dressed as a devil. I’m not sure it’s quite as eyeball-exploding as Skrillex’s Nabil-directed “Fuck That” video, but it’s well worth a look regardless.

Pusha T - “Lunch Money” (Official Video)

Last month, we heard “Lunch Money,” Pusha T’s dizzying new Kanye West-produced track, which may be the first single from Pusha’s forthcoming album King Push. Today, we get the video, a weird and absorbing rap-video take on the found-footage horror movie. Pusha mean-mugs ferociously while some truly insane-looking street dancers do unnatural things with their bodies. The video, which Emil Nava directed, looks like nothing else.

Basement Jaxx - “Rock This Road” (Feat. Shakka) Video

It’s been a long time since they made anything as inspired as “Where’s Your Head At,” but British dance duo Basement Jaxx basically never make bad videos. Everything they do is, at the very least, pretty entertaining, and their new clip for “Rock This Road,” a track with London singer Shakka from the group’s new Junto album, serves as a good example. In the video, Shakka plays an interstellar dance overlord who travels to earth to harvest humanity’s dance energies. The alien dancers, it turns out, are way, way better dancers than the clumsy and uninspired humans. In the admittedly limited category of Basement Jaxx videos about earth’s dance-energy crisis, this is right up there with “Never Say Never.”

Panda Bear - “Boys Latin” (Official Video)

Panda Bear premiered a video for a new Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper track called “Boys Latin” on Adult Swim early this morning. The animated video follows around a lanky boy as he explores a shimmering swampy landscape and interacts with a magical plant that causes him to grow some colorful appendages. He meets up with a few other boys who follow him along on his journey. The song gets its name from a high-class Catholic prep school located in Baltimore. The visuals were directed by Isaiah Saxon and Sean Hellfritsch from Encyclopedia Pictura, who have also worked on videos from Björk, Grizzly Bear, and Metronomy in the past.

Watch Bob Dylan Play A Show For One Guy

Last month, we found out that Bob Dylan had played a show in Philadelphia for just one person as part of the Swedish film series Experiment Ensam, which sets people up in situations alone that they would normally experience with a crowd. The lucky attendee was Swedish superfan Fredik Wikingsson, who had seen Dylan play live 20 times before. The concert took place at Philadelphia’s Academy Of Music and Dylan and his band played four songs. “I’ve been smiling the whole time,” Wikingsson said after the show. “My cheeks are exhausted. I feel like a kid. It was a perfect moment.” The whole segment has made its way online, and you can watch it below.

Big K.R.I.T. - “Soul Food” (Feat. Raphael Saadiq) Video

Last month, the Mississippi rapper and producer Big K.R.I.T. released Cadillactica, his second major-label album. It’s the sort of album that gets overlooked but shouldn’t; it’s a musically adventurous work in some quiet and comfortable ways, from the type of artist who never trumpets all the things going on in his records. “Soul Food” is a warm nostalgia-fest with the veteran old-school R&B auteur Raphael Saadiq. And in its new video, from director Alex Nazari, K.R.I.T. goes back to the site of some old family celebrations and gets lost in the memories.

Nicki Minaj - “Only” (Feat. Drake, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown) Video

After attracting so much controversy for her Nazi-themed lyric video for “Only,” Nicki Minaj decided to take a step back for the real video … and craft a dark, sexy, and stylized S&M playground. Drake and Lil Wayne join a dolled-up Minaj to sing their verses on the track, while Chris Brown sings the chorus separately wearing some creepy contact lenses that make him look like the devil that he is. Most of the video takes place in a chaotic warehouse with whips and chains.

Cheatahs - “Controller” (Official Video)

Last month, we heard British shoegazers Cheatahs’ new single, “Controller,” from their upcoming EP, Sunne. Now here’s the video: an unwitting portrayal of two school girls pondering the prospects of life after death and other abstract philosophical topics as they hang out in a graveyard and an arcade. The graveyard seems to be the place where these advanced conversation topics emerge, as the girls stare pensively at headstones, while the arcade hosts the debriefing sessions. Images of anime characters, busy lights, and Dance Dance Revolution vectors flash across the screen between shots of the girls’ socratic discussion, establishing a stark contrast between the graveness and maturity of the conversation and the arcade, a place that stands for youth and playfulness. “Please, one life’s already too much,” one of them says to the other as they pore over their respective racing video games. “Lol” the other responds. Federico Urdaneta directs.

OFF! - "Meet Your God" (Feat. Jack Black) (Official Video)

Last week, California hardcore supergroup OFF! released their gory, ridiculous, deeply entertaining “Over Our Heads” video, in which Jack Black played a berserk skydiving instructor and half the band died violently. That video came with a “to be continued…” tag, and the band didn’t take long to make good on it. Today, we get the possibly-even-bloodier conclusion, in which Jack Black and Keith Morris go into battle against a bear. Jimmy Hayward once again directs.

Cave People - “Brace” (Official Video) + Stream Cave People Older EP

A little more than a week ago, the Philly-based band Cave People released their 5-song EP Older (Stream), and Chris aptly described it as “triumphantly weary.” The video for their single “Brace” plays off of the song’s recurring lyrics, “I’m dying to see the bad times end,” by splicing together a lot of footage of what look like very good times. Directed by Matt Schimelfenig, the video features Cave People driving through the city, putting together puzzles, and most importantly, playing with a cat.

Thumpers - “Devotee” (Feat. Jena Malone) Video

Back in October, we shared “Devotee,” a track from British synth-pop duo Thumpers featuring actress Jenna Malone. Apparently, Thumpers met Malone during the Los Angeles leg of their tour, and the three ended up eating pie at a diner at 3AM and discussing prospective collaborations. Now you can watch director Anna Victoria Best’s video for “Devotee,” which is more or less a behind-the-scenes montage of Thumpers members Marcus Pepperell and John Hamson Jr. goofing off artistically with Malone in a white studio, interspersed with the occasional portrait shot with what appears to be superimposed glitter or twinkling stars. It’s the kind of video that doesn’t necessarily tell a story but serves to bolster the track with an inside look at the collaborative constituents behind the project. By watching Pepperell, Hamson, and Malone pursue whatever artistic whim comes to mind in this blank studio, we get to see the kind of teamwork that went into the unpredictable collaboration.

Dutch Uncles - “In N Out” (Official Video)

If you remember one thing about Out Of Touch In The Wild, the 2013 album from the Manchester art-pop group Dutch Uncles, it’s probably the “Flexxin” video, in which frontman Duncan Wallis shows off some impressively strange dance moves. Wallis brings back some of those moves at the end of his band’s new video for “In N Out,” the first single from their forthcoming O Shudder album. He also gets extremely naked — we get severe body-hair close-ups — and communes with an alien spaceship that looks like a brain. Jody Whittle directs.

Dan Deacon - “Feel The Lightning” (Official Video)

Earlier this week, Baltimore electronic music party-starter Dan Deacon shared a trailer for a mysterious new album that’ll be out in February. As it turns out, the new album is called Gliss Riffer, and it marks Deacon’s return to recording on his own after teaming up with ensembles of musicians on his last two albums, 2012′s America and 2009′s Bromst. That’s not to say it’s a return to his spazzy neon-skull days, though. First single “Feel The Lightning” is a big, gooey synthpop ballad with some pretty female vocals that are actually Deacon’s own manipulated voice. Director Andrew Jeffrey Wright has made a surreal, cartoonish video for the track, showing us a house where interpretive dancers invade and chairs come alive to fuck while the owner is out.

Watch South Park‘s Holiday Special Featuring Iggy Azalea, Hologram Kurt Cobain, & A Taylor Swift/Bill Cosby Duet

South Park closed out its 18th season with a slew of musical “guest stars” that have generated a lot of criticism and discussion this year. There’s a hologram of Kurt Cobain, performances from Taylor Swift and Iggy Azalea, and Stan’s dad resurfaces as Lorde, again. There are several duets throughout — Azalea performs “A Holly Jolly Christmas” alongside an Elvis hologram, and Swift is faced with the obscenely uncomfortable task of singing “Baby It’s Cold Outside” with Bill Cosby. It’s weird, it’s fucked up, it’s South Park. You can watch the entire episode LINK.

Coldplay - "Ink" (Official Fans' Cut) Video

The most popular journey chosen by fans through the interactive Ink video (from more than 300 possibilities) - choose your own version at http://www.coldplay.com/ink now.

Top Trending Videos of 2014 (Global)

Giant spiders, singing nuns and strangers kissing: YouTube reveals top 10 videos the world has been watching this year

We looked at views, likes, shares, searches, parodies, remixes and responses to identify the 10 videos that everybody talked about in 2014.

Literature - “New Jacket” (Official Video) + Stream Literature Chorus

On their album Chorus, the Philadelphia band Literature show an equal love of the ’60s and ’80s forms of jangle. One of their catchiest songs is “New Jacket,” a glimmering lo-fi romp. In its new music video, director Erik Smith shows us a lot of musicians playing and sun shining on residential neighborhoods, and he goes way too heavy on the double exposure. 

Watch Pharmakon’s Bestial Burden Short Film

Pharmakon’s Bestial Burden (Stream) is a visceral meditation on some serious health problems, so as you might expect, the new short film Pharmakon just released to accompany the album is pretty gross. It’s not necessarily NSFW, but video depicting internal organs getting torn apart (reminiscent of the album cover) is not for the squeamish. There’s also a lot of dark performance footage and some fire. Margaret Chardiet co-directed the clip with Nina Hartmann.

Ex Cops - “White Noise” (Official Video)

In the video for “White Noise,” the recent single from the glamorous New York alt-pop duo Ex Cops, we see a mob of terrifyingly attractive young people descend upon a warehouse and stage a huge pillow fight. Ex Cops themselves, who could also be considered terrifyingly attractive, soundtrack said pillow fight. It’s one of those videos that almost plays as a TV commercial, and it couldn’t possibly be any more different from what singer Amalie Bruun does with her black metal Myrkur alter-ego. Niklaus Lange directed the video.

Etiquette - “Outside In” (Official Video)

Etiquette is the Toronto-based duo of Holy Fuck’s Graham Walsh and his partner Julie Fader, a solo artist and collaborator with the likes of Great Lake Swimmers and Chad VanGaalen. Their debut Reminisce is coming early next year, and lead single “Outside In” suggests the album will be one to look out for. It’s eerie, minimal synth and guitar music in the vein of Chromatics, or the back half of Talking Heads’ Remain In Light crossed with an ’80s power ballad. Directors Christopher Mills and Gaëlle Legrand created a striking animated video for “Outside In” in collaboration with MuchFACT, and its dark-hued palette expertly complements the music’s sound and feel.

Trust Fund - “Cut Me Out” (Official Video)

The first thing you’ll notice about Trust Fund’s video for “Cut Me Out” is that everyone has a big smile on and how could they not? They’re surrounded by dogs! Looks like the concept for this video was just “stick people alone in a room with a bunch of dogs and watch them play,” which is a pretty great idea. Lola, Pickle, Sherpa, Gus, Arthur, and Mena are the stars of the show here, but that doesn’t mean the music isn’t any good!

Watch Kendrick Lamar’s Cinematic Reebok Ad

You know a rapper has reached a rarefied level of fame when a goddam sneaker company is enlisting him for a commercial. It’s not exactly a surprise that Kendrick Lamar is a star on the rise, but it’s still striking to see Reebok devote considerable resources to a three-minute ad starring the guy. Music-video director Anthony Mandler helmed the black-and-white ad, which shows Kendrick skulking through his Compton hometown and generally looking as iconic as possible. In the video, he recites a feverish a cappella verse. As far as I can tell, it’s unreleased, though I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him do it as a live freestyle or something like that.

Death Grips - “Inanimate Sensation” (Official Video)

Death Grips have shared the first song from jenny death, the second half of their double album the powers that b that kicked off with the release of niggas on the moon earlier this year. The track is called “Inanimate Sensation” and is accompanied by a video that shows some visuals projected from a Jumbotron that’s crashed into the middle of a basketball court.

Belle & Sebastian - “Nobody’s Empire” (Official Video)

“Nobody’s Empire,” the second single and video from Belle & Sebastian’s Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance, is also the album’s opening song. Furthermore, Stuart Murdoch calls it “absolutely the most personal [song] I’ve ever written,” telling the story of his health problems as a child. It’s unmistakably a Belle & Sebastian song, leaning toward the band’s earliest twee-folk sounds but with flashes of their more theatrical mid-period records. In the video, directed by Murdoch and Blair Young, shots of model Tamzin Merchant singing Murdoch’s lyrics are interspersed with footage from the album cover shoot and home movies culled from more than 100 B&S fans and the Scottish Screen Archive at the National Library Of Scotland and the Prelinger Archives.

Twin Shadow - “Turn Me Up” (Official Video)

Yesterday we heard “Turn Me Up,” the sublime lead single from Twin Shadow’s upcoming Eclipse. Now here’s director Alex Turvey and creative director Milan Zrnic’s video for the song, a stylish, shadowy (ahem) black and white clip featuring some A-plus emoting from George Lewis Jr. It makes me love the song even more; below, see if you feel the same way.

Låpsley - “Falling Short” (Official Video)

Låpsley’s subtle and unassuming brand of electronic music got her noticed in a big way when she got picked up by XL. She’ll release her first EP with them early next year, and she’s just put out a video for lead single “Falling Short.” The clip puts the young singer-songwriter front-and-center; the camera spins slowly around her as she holds a man in a statuesque pose, moving mechanically like one of those historical recreations you see in museums sometimes. It’s shot in elegant, understated black-and-white.

Paul McCartney - “Hope For The Future” (Official Video)

Today happens to mark the 34th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder. His old bandmate Paul McCartney recently appeared on the UK’s Jonathan Ross Show, where he talked a bit about learning of Lennon’s murder and how awful that day was. Perhaps not coincidentally, today is also the day McCartney shares the video for his new song “Hope For The Future.” McCartney contributed the song to the video game Destiny, and the oddly stirring video shows McCartney as a holographic projection, singing to various game characters above the game’s futuristic landscapes. Wwatch the “Hope For The Future” video and McCartney’s Jonathan Ross appearance.

Kate Pierson - “Mister Sister” Lyric Video (Feat. Fred Armisen)

Kate Pierson’s “Mister Sister” video, from the B-52s singer’s debut solo album Guitars And Microphones, featured a heavy dose of Fred Armisen. There’s more where that came from: Armisen stars in a lyric video for the song, too, goofing around in frilly yellow gloves to the triumphant jangle of Pierson’s colorful, trans-positive new wave jam. Watch her words swirl around him.

The 10 Best Viral Videos of 2014

This year was another great one for the DIY art form known as the viral video. Sure, that was partially thanks to ringers like Jimmy Fallon and (the enduringly hilarious) Weird Al, but plenty of 2014’s most infectious laughs still came from amateur auteurs harnessing the awesome power of the Internet. Here are 10 silly web clips from the last 12 months we’re comfortable naming as the objective best, if for no reason other than you’ll probably forget all about this once the next big cat video comes out.

10. Dancing Kid “Goes Full Diva” on Live TV

Since Brendan Jordan’s glorious television debut, the 15-year-old has been on Ellen, The Queen Latifah Show and even modeled for American Apparel. But before all that he was just a fierce, scene-stealing boy voguing his heart out on the local news. God bless you, Diva Kid.

9. Farmer Treats Cows to Trombone Serenade



Some might attribute the popularity of dumb Internet videos to our allegedly shrinking attention spans, but “Serenading the cattle with my trombone (Lorde – Royals)” serves as a compelling counterexample to that theory. A classic slow-burner, the clip rewards viewers for their patience above all else, coming to a immensely satisfying (if not particularly surprising) conclusion.

8. President Obama Visits Between Two Ferns



There isn’t a lot to say about this video of the President and Zach Galifianakis trading barbs on a nearly empty sound stage, other than it was absolutely wonderful. Ostensibly promoting the Affordable Care Act, the exchange managed to make health care reform funny, a feat that surely deserves a spot in the Making Boring Stuff Interesting Hall of Fame.

7. Brian Williams Goes Old School with “Rapper’s Delight”



After taking over The Tonight Show in February, Jimmy Fallon quickly established his place in the late-night television landscape, thanks in large part to web-friendly segments like the one seen above. A later iteration showing the NBC Nightly News anchor rapping “Gin and Juice” may have been just a bit funnier, but this one came first, airing just days into Fallon’s tenure.

6. Old Man Breaks it Down to “Rock Around The Clock”



Almost six months after Dancing Old Guy made his Internet debut, this anonymous old man’s smokin’ moves still amaze. Can you think of a slicker move than dude’s double cane toss? You cannot.

5. “All By Myself” in McCarran International



Heartbreak can be hard, but a long, unexpected layover will crush your soul. This guerrilla video for Céline Dion’s “All By Myself” shot in an empty Las Vegas airport proved as much when it hit the Internet this June, coming out even sadder than the 1996 original.

4. Emma Stone Lip Sync Battles Jimmy Fallon



Of the Fallon-helmed Tonight Show’s recurring bits, none has been bigger than Lip Sync Battles. And of those Lip Sync Battles, none was more celebrated than Fallon’s April showdown with The Amazing Spider-Man’s Emma Stone. Now Lip Sync Battles is being developed as its own spinoff series, surely thanks in no small part to Stone’s scorching rendition of “All I Do is Win” seen above.

3. Weird Al Yankovic – “Word Crimes”



When Weird Al announced his ambitious “eight videos in eight days” plan earlier this year, few could have predicted how well it would pay off, eventually earning Yankovic his first number one record. Arguably the best of these releases (and the most popular by a mile) was the animated video for “Word Crimes,” an ode to grammatical pedantry that managed to partially rehabilitate the super-skeezy smash hit it riffed on.

2. Hero Cat Saves Child From Dog Attack



Lots of cat video stars can be described as cute, but far fewer can be called courageous, like the brave feline seen protecting a four-year-old boy from a random dog attack in this much-watched clip. Tara the Cat rocketed to superstardom soon after the amazing security cam footage hit the web, debuting at 22 on Friskies’ authoritative list of the 50 Most Influential Cats.

1. Apparently Kid



Apparently, we think this was the best viral video of 2014. Because apparently, this interview with 5-year-old Noah Ritter has all the classic elements of a great YouTube offering, apparently including a cute kid, a local news broadcast and an easy to remember catchphrase. And apparently, the insanely popular clip has since been viewed over 17 million times. Apparently.

Joey Bada$$ - “No. 99″ (Official Video)

Early next year, the young Brooklyn boom-bap revivalist Joey Bada$$ will finally release B4.DA.$$, his proper debut LP. In the new video for “No. 99,” the Statik Selektah-produced, “Scenario”-referencing track that he shared yesterday, Bada$$ plays Badmon, a masked Brooklyn vigilante leading an army of likeminded kids against an ill-defined malignant authority. Director Rik Cordero stages the whole thing as a fake news broadcast. It’s silly but fun, at least until you think about how embattled black kids in Brooklyn probably feel after all these cop killings. Then, it gets considerably more poignant.

Majid Jordan - “Her” (Official Video)

Majid Jordan — the duo of Drake associates Majid Al Maskati and Jordan Ullman — released their A Place Like This EP this year, and we posted their suave R&B track “Her” among other fine selections last summer. Now the song has an equally sleek and misty video by Common Good, in which the duo flirts with some very robot-like, mannequin-looking women.

Eric Church - “Talladega” (Official Video)

Nashville country badass Eric Church makes music that’s pretty far afield from the stuff we usually post on Stereogum, but he made one of our favorite albums of the year, so we’re going to start posting his stuff now. Best get used to it. Church’s new video is for “Talladega,” the sepia-toned reminisce about nights at an Alabama speedway. It’s one of the more pedestrian songs on Church’s great album The Outsiders, but it’s still a deeply satisfying piece of Southern rock power-balladry. Frequent Church collaborator Peter Zavadil directed the video, in which Church and his band play on a racetrack amidst, like, ghost cars.

I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - "You Are Dead To Me" (Official Video)

A couple of months ago, the gothic Texan indie rockers I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness released Dust, their first album in eight years. Their new video for the wriggling, sweaty “You Are Dead To Me” plays as an ominous experimental short, even if it’s really just about three smiling ladies off in the woods somewhere. Jesse Gelaznik directed the video.

The 20 Best Music Videos of 2014

Dancing is one of the most well-worn music video tropes, and there's plenty of it on this list. But rather than hewing to typical choreography, picturesque sets, and rhythmic perfection in the Michael Jackson mold, many of the best videos of the year took a more impressionistic route, from the eerie digital twerker at the center of Arca's "Thievery" clip, to FKA twigs flailing over a dead body in "Video Girl", to the freeform explosiveness of Sia's "Chandelier". Even video formalist par excellence Beyoncé got in on the subversion with her (relatively) dressed-down, DIY video for "7/11", which has her getting loose in a messy bedroom.

Along with all the dancing, the following alphabetical list includes breakout clips from Shamir and Vic Mensa, Rick Ross translated via emoji, heavy-metal LARPing, Anne Hathaway in drag, the ultimate mash-up video, and more.

2 Many DJs: As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2

Director: Glyn Peppiatt

Twelve years after they helped transformed the term "mash-up" from an action to a genre with their landmark As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 megamix, 2 Many DJs grant us the opportunity to be dazzled by it all over again through this riotous reanimation of the source albums’ cover art. Certainly, being serenaded by Peaches’ labia while the Velvet Underground & Nico’s unpeeled punk banana pokes out of her hot pants is more fun than reading a list of samples on Wikipedia, no? — Stuart Berman

Arca: "Thievery"



Director: Jesse Kanda

In which Arca’s nude, gender-amorphous alter ego Xen twerks flawlessly within a strobe-lit digital vacuum—a disturbing, irreverent, and wholly original spin on the tone-deaf big butt "trend" the media tried to force feed you this year. — Eric Torres

Ariel Pink: "Picture Me Gone"



Director: Grant Singer

Characters go about their lives behind emotionless, uncanny-valley masks while Ariel Pink lip syncs his corroded heart out. Presumably, it’s about the tragedy of a world that forces us to hide our day-to-day feelings. Also: super creepy. — Evan Minsker

Azealia Banks: "Chasing Time"



Director: Marc Klasfeld

Azealia Banks currently reigns as the fashionable overlord of a parallel universe. When she’s not popping black orbs or relaxing in the buff, she can be seen holding court with her dancers in garb fit for a cyberpunk queen—ponchos! apron belts! breast-baring leotards!—and giving homage to the brazen MCs who wrote the blueprint on feminine badassery. Kim, Missy, Left Eye: This one’s for you. — Zoe Camp

Beyoncé: "7/11"



Director: Beyoncé

With her ecstatically DIY "7/11" video, Beyoncé brings together a host of modern obsessions: GoPros, twerking, kale. Even though the clip is edited to a T, it gives us a glimpse into Bey’s life offstage: a hopeless perfectionist goofing off at her leisure.  — Molly Beauchemin

Blood Orange: "You're Not Good Enough"



Director: Gia Coppola

A great archetypal pop video that ends with Dev Hynes and Gia Coppola exchanging a secret handshake, smiling about what they’ve just created. They should, too—primarily because of the part where Hynes sings into a single flower while staring off into the distance. — Evan Minsker

Cashmere Cat: "Wedding Bells"



Director: Peter Marsden

We’ve all seen the movie trailer where two people meet, have sex, fight, make up, and finally gaze into a breaking ocean, all while Very Dramatic Music ups the emotional ante. But director Peter Marsden and Norwegian producer Cashmere Cat flip things around here, serving up a music video that looks like a trailer—replete with SoundCloud comments ("Cashmere Cat is a girl," "LOL no he’s a guy") standing in for critical hosannas—that’s more enjoyable than most full-length features. — Ryan Dombal

FKA twigs: "Two Weeks"



Director: Nabil

In 2002, Aaliyah posthumously starred in a cinematic adaptation of Anne Rice’s The Queen of the Damned as the first vampire to ever walk the earth. In 2014, Tahliah Barnett honored the late legend’s role by bringing a queen of the shadows into the light, re-envisioning her as sort of a sun goddess—all-powerful, in-control, a giant among mere mortals. — Zoe Camp

FKA twigs: "Video Girl"



Director: Kahlil Joseph

Just a few years ago, twigs was a go-to dancer for cheeseball pop videos. The song "Video Girl" is about those days, when the singer would embarrassingly deny that she was a girl who danced in cheeseball pop videos. And just as her music is a beautiful inversion of what we’re used to hearing on the radio, the "Video Girl" video is a haunted take on your typical pop clip. Yes, twigs dances in it. But instead of being surrounded by pastels and synchronicity and dutiful artifice, she’s in a black-and-white lethal injection chamber, mixing sex and death while straddling a murderer. — Ryan Dombal

Flying Lotus: "Never Catch Me" [ft. Kendrick Lamar]



Director: Hiro Murai

With his album You’re Dead!, Flying Lotus set out to find the "blissful and silly" moments in death. So while a church mourns two children in this video, the kids rise from their coffins with smiles, dance away, and drive off in a hearse. It’s the same old ending, with a new beginning. — Evan Minsker

Iceage: "The Lord's Favorite"



Director: Cali Thornhill DeWitt

Even when these Danes are pouring champagne over their heads in slo-mo, getting shoulder massages from a guy in drag, and beckoning "come here and be gorgeous for me" over power-tripping cowpunk, they aren't commanding glamorous excess as much as they're using small, studied gestures to do something bigger than their limited means. — Jenn Pelly

Jamie xx: "Sleep Sound"




Director: Sofia Mattioli and Cherise Payne

With the help of the Manchester Deaf Centre, directors Sofia Mattioli and Cherise Payne capture a group of hearing-impaired people both young and old in this gorgeous examination of what it means to experience music using little more than your imagination. — Eric Torres

Jenny Lewis: "Just One of the Guys"



Director: Jenny Lewis

The former Rilo Kiley singer and her Hollywood pals (including Anne Hathaway and Kristen Stewart) bro-out in drag, upending stereotypical notions of what women should be doing in their 30s. — Jenn Pelly

Lykke Li: "No Rest for the Wicked"



Director: Tarik Saleh

One shot of Lykke Li in a hairnet is all it takes to establish her no-frills cred in this video, which traces a doomed relationship with a tattooed bad boy who’s run out of town—or something worse—for his so-called wickedness. Low-lit bar dancing, moody strolls through wheat fields, brooding looks passed between haunted hearts—it’s equal parts Brokeback Mountain and Terrence Malick, an uneasy calm before the fall. — Jeremy Gordon

Mac DeMarco: "Passing Out Pieces"



Director: Pierce McGarry

And you thought Kramer’s shower-soaked salad prep was the most revolting display of leafy vegetables in a bathtub… — Stuart Berman

Mastodon: "High Road"



Director: Roboshobo

LARPing is a lot more difficult than it looks. Provided you don’t want to come across as a fugitive wanted for robbing your local Medieval Times, you’ll need to spend hours honing weapons, practicing swordplay, and questing with your fellow geeks at the local park—not to mention dealing with those waiting to kick your butt when you get back to the real world. But as the "High Road" video demonstrates, modern-day adventuring isn’t about bragging rights, or even the chance to relive an epic time long since lost. It’s about believing in yourself and charging head-on towards the spoils that await, all while knowing that your squire—or, at least, your grandpa—will be there to defend your honor when the assholes strike. — Zoe Camp

Rick Ross: "Sanctified" [ft. Kanye West and Big Sean]



Director: Jesse Hill

If you look to this annual list as a time capsule of styles and aesthetics that permeated the preceding year, look no further than Jesse Hill’s emoji-crazed, fan-made video for Rick Ross’ "Sanctified". There’s much to learn from this funny, flawless evocation of humanity’s newest common tongue—for instance, I did not know the eggplant emoji meant "dick" until I watched this masterpiece. — Corban Goble

Shamir: "On the Regular"



Director: Anthony Sylvester

If only all of us could sum up our personalities as succinctly and attractively as Shamir Bailey does in the clip for "On the Regular", which throws bugged-out eyes, big smiles, and brightly-colored balls at the viewer as the rapper/singer shows why—yes, yes—he’s that guy. — Jeremy Gordon

Sia: "Chandelier"



Director: Sia and Daniel Askill

Eleven-year-old Maddie Ziegler takes Sia's "Chandelier" by the horns, executing an inventive dance routine while flowing through an apartment. We never leave the residence, but the delicate visual framing of the choreography makes this video’s world feel just as explosive and liberating as the song that inspired it. — Molly Beauchemin

Vic Mensa: "Down on My Luck"



Director: Ben Dickinson

If Tom Cruise’s underrated 2014 thriller Edge of Tomorrow—in which a dishonored army publicist is thrown into combat only to learn that every time he dies fighting an alien enemy, he is resurrected at the beginning of the day before the fight—is the alien-movie version of Groundhog Day, then Vic Mensa’s "Down on My Luck" video is the partying version. In the clip, Mensa keeps replaying a calamitous club outing, slowly learning from his mistakes—getting drugged, getting punched, responding to a text he shouldn’t have responded to—to earn his final reward: a hard-won spliff at the end of the night. — Corban Goble

With his album You’re Dead!, Flying Lotus set out to find the "blissful and silly" moments in death. So while a church mourns two children in this video, the kids rise from their coffins with smiles, dance away, and drive off in a hearse. It’s the same old ending, with a new beginning. — Evan Minsker

Via: Pitchfork.