Mientras algunos (Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Madonna, Taylor Swift, etc.) siguen cantando a cámara y le dan de comer a su ego, otros eligen contar una historia, darle otra vida a una canción o simplemente desarrollar una buena idea. Eso buscamos con nuestra selección de los Mejores Videoclips Internacionales de 2015. Vean.
When I put this list together last year, the big story was the emergence of auteurs in the online era of the music video. For the past decade, music videos have mostly lived online, far away from the cable networks that once nurtured the art form. Back in the ’90s, when cable networks were starting to find excuses not to show music videos anymore, we still saw these great directors who were using music videos like playgrounds: Spike Jonze, Hype Williams, Michel Gondry. And we’ve begun to see those again. Last year, the list was dominated by Nabil and Hiro Murai, both of them in a knife-fight to determine who the best music-video director in the world was.
Well, that time is over. Nabil and Murai had four videos apiece on last year’s list. This year, the two of them together only have one appearance on the list. This year’s MVP is Grant Singer, who also did well on last year’s list and who has four videos on this year’s countdown. Last year, Singer was sneaking up behind Nabil and Murai. This year, thanks to an unlikely alliance with a fast-rising pop star, he’s completely eclipsed both of them.
But then, Singer wasn’t the big story this year. Instead, the big story was the partnerships we’ve seen forming between musicians and directors: Colin Tilley and Kendrick Lamar, Paul Thomas Anderson and Joanna Newsom, Bob Gallagher and Girl Band, Allie Avital and Autre Ne Veut, FKA twigs and FKA twigs, Grimes and Grimes. These artists are figuring out that these directors understand their visions and aesthetics, that their music and these people’s visual sensibilities just make sense together. (And when the artist and the director are one and the same, they’re just that much more symbiotic.)
So Grant Singer is both the greatest director of this age and the greatest beneficiary of it. He started out the year working with Ariel Pink, and he ended it working with the Weeknd. With Ariel Pink, he worked up a sticky, Kubrickian sense of transgression. Everything in his Pink videos seemed somehow wrong, in all these compelling ways that you couldn’t quite parse. And with his videos for the Weeknd, he’s turned evil and chaos and self-destructive urges into these seductive widescreen things. He’s made darkness work as pop, which is not easy to do.
But Singer didn’t have the best video of the year. And there were plenty more voices involved in this year’s videos — people who had their own singular visions and who made those visions intertwine with music in fun and fascinating ways. This list — which reflects my opinion and my opinion only — has so many great videos, and each one is entirely unlike the one before or after it. We’re living through a great time for music videos, and there are 50 pieces of evidence of that below.
50. Despot – “House Of Bricks” (Dir. Evan Mast)
Things that should appear in more rap videos, an incomplete list: (1) Falcons, (2) warm and humanistic portrayals of the rapper’s family members, (3) iguanas, (4) gold rings shaped like apartment complexes, (5) falcons.
49. The Mountain Goats – “The Legend Of Chavo Guerrero” (Dir. Scott Jacobson)
A cartoonish tribute to professional wrestling, that most cartoonish of great American art forms. Check out 66-year-old Guerrero, out here throwing scoop slams and moonsault presses.
48. Chris Brown & Tyga – “Ayo” (Dir. Colin Tilley)
Both of these guys are loathsome human beings who had terrible years. But if you can resist the charms of a bulldozer dumping a load of $50 bills into a swimming pool, or a tiger casually sauntering through a mansion, then maybe you don’t like music videos that much.
47. Royal Blood – “Out Of The Black” (Dir. David Wilson & Christy Karacas)
If you’re going to do psychedelic hyperviolent animation, do it right, you know?
46. Autre Ne Veut – “The Age Of Transparency” (Dir. Allie Avital)
Shout out to any artist willing to portray himself as a terrifying narcissistic self-Googling supervillain sociopath.
45. Flight Facilities – “Down To Earth” (Dir. Rhett Wade-Ferrell)
You have to love the idea that someone would watch Moon and think, “You know what that Sam Rockwell really needs? His own ‘Weapon Of Choice.'”
44. Royal Headache – “Carolina” (Dir. Damian Sawyers)
Dynamic, wiry, exciting, weird rock frontman are absolutely crucial for so many reasons. But one of those reasons is that without them, you don’t get any videos like this. My favorite part: All the other guys in the band legitimately cracking up when Shogun comes careening back into the frame at the end.
43. FIDLAR – “40oz On Repeat” (Dir. Ryan Baxley)
One of the great things about being a music-video nerd: Being able to giggle with delight everytime this video launches into another parody. My favorite is the “Virtual Insanity” moment, but they’re all great.
42. Run The Jewels – “Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)” (Feat. Zach De La Rocha) (Dir. AG Rojas)
The funny thing about the way this video depicts police brutality: If bloody, intense one-on-one fistfights were the norm, we’d be in a much better place as a society.
41. The Weeknd – “Tell Your Friends” (Dir. Grant Singer)
Who was the last pop star who regularly put visions this bleak and heavy onscreen? DMX? Marilyn Manson? Has there ever even been one?
40. Childish Gambino – “Sober” (Dir. Hiro Murai)
Donald Glover is so good at playing a creepy, intense alien-stalker type that I wonder if this hasn’t always secretly been his rap persona. It would explain a lot.
39. Girl Band – “Paul” (Dir. Bob Gallagher)
The whole “wouldn’t it be funny if the people on kids’ TV?” thing doesn’t much appeal to me. But this is a video with vivid, surreal imagery and a cogent narrative. And it works with the music. And it has an oddly encouraging conclusion. These things are not easy! At least 60% of the videos I’ve watched this year don’t have a single one of those things.
38. Acton Bronson – “Baby Blue” (Feat. Chance The Rapper) (Dir. Lil Chris)
Coming To America is a perfect movie. You can’t improve on it. What you can do is you can pay tribute to it by making it into an antic, warmhearted rap-video romp. You can do that all day.
37. GENER8ION & M.I.A. – “The New International Sound (Part II)” (Dir. Inigo Westmeier)
This one is sort of a cheat, since it’s composed entirely of clips from a documentary about China’s biggest fighting school for kids. But goddam, it is so full of incredible sights. I eagerly await the era when tiny Chinese girls utterly dominate the UFC.
36. Oneohtrix Point Never – “Sticky Drama” (Dir. Jon Rafman & Daniel Lopatin)
Season six of Game Of Thrones turned out to be weirder than anyone could’ve anticipated.
35. Kelela – “A Message” (Dir. Daniel Sannwald)
It’s like someone turned Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” video into an experimental sci-fi short without skimping on its emotional force.
34. Twin Shadow – “I’m Ready” (Dir. Lance Drake)
Top-shelf ’90s VH1 black-and-white sexiness, except with mobsters and a giant laser-sword.
Judging by this video, it’s an absolute fucking crime that we don’t just film every music video in Shanghai.
32. Kanye West – “Only One” (Feat. Paul McCartney) (Dir. Spike Jonze)
Arguably the greatest music-video director of all time returns to shoot this simple, moving mood-piece about how much Kanye West loves his daughter.
31. The Chemical Brothers – “Sometimes I Feel So Deserted” (Dir. Ninian Doff)
The Chems are secretly one of the greatest music-video acts of all time. And this video, a Mad Max/Tetsuo The Ironman body-horror romp, is all the better for its stark simplicity and its refusal to explain a single goddam thing.
30. U2 – “Song For Someone” (Dir. Vincent Haycock)
The best reason for this U2 song to exist: It gave Woody Harrelson an excuse to spend eight minutes eloquently emoting about loss and regret.
29. FKA twigs – “Pendulum” (Dir. FKA twigs)
When twigs sings, “I’m a sweet little lovemaker” on record, it means one thing. When she sings it while she’s staring down the camera and tied up and suspended over an undulating black CGI void, it means something else.
28. Grimes – “REALiTi” (Dir. Grimes)
When most artists bring cameras on tour to document the proceedings, the results are interminable. But most artists don’t have Claire Boucher’s eye. Every frame of this thing glows.
27. Tame Impala – “Let It Happen” (Dir. David Wilson)
The most cartoonish death-hallucination captured on film since Waking Life — which was, lest we forget, an actual cartoon.
A furious condemnation of the way the law treats young black men. We got plenty of those this year, just as we should every year. But the thing that makes this one sing is how goddam bored Staples looks throughout. He’s been through all this before, and he’ll go through it all again.
25. The Weeknd – “Can’t Feel My Face” (Dir. Grant Singer)
This video’s burst-into-flames climax is: (a) an extended metaphor about the demands of a larger audience, (b) a sly reference to what happened to Michael Jackson’s hair on the set of that Pepsi commercial, (c) a cool effect, or (d) all of the above.
24. Will Butler – “Anna” (Dir. Brantley Gutierrez)
The best Emma Stone performance since, what, Easy A? Superbad? Could it seriously be the best Emma Stone performance ever? (Let’s not talk about Birdman. Fuck Birdman.)
23. Mark Ronson – “Feel Right” (Feat. Mystikal) (Dir. Bruno Mars & Cameron Duddy)
Is it possible that Bruno Mars is a great music-video director? And if so, how do we feel about it? If the Buffy reference here was his idea, I feel pretty goddam good about it.
22. Future Islands – “A Song For Our Grandfathers” (Dir. Jay Buim)
A beautiful, earnest, happy little vision about returning to the place that made you and going to see the people who will always love you the most. How badly do you want to be at that barbecue?
On paper, “a trip to a Florida waterpark with a car full of drunk high-school goths” does not look like the best use of a day. This video makes it look absolutely idyllic.
20. Girl Band – “Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?” (NSFW) (Dir. Bob Gallagher)
If your parents ever try to ask you why you didn’t go to medical school, just show them this video.
19. Rae Sremmurd – “Come Get Her” (Dir. Motion Family)
I never thought I would see this happen, but all of a sudden, Master P’s “Oooh Wee” is not the most beautifully, absurdly stupid cowboy-themed rap video of all time.
If you ever want to convince me that it’s OK to hear DMX reduced to playing hypeman on a cheesed-out EDM tune, just show me these incredible, death-defying images of dudes skateboarding in Dubai.
The triumphant return of an American hero, all her bugged-out theatrical weirdness fully intact.
16. Kendrick Lamar – “These Walls” (Dir. Colin Tilley & The Little Homies)
There’s a moment in the IHeartMemphis “Hit The Quan” video when IHeartMemphis watches Kendrick Lamar and Terry Crews doing his dance in this video. He loses his mind. I did, too, for different reasons.
15. The Weeknd – “The Hills” (Dir. Grant Singer)
It’s impossible to pinpoint this sort of thing exactly, but I’m pretty sure the moment the car blows up is the moment that Abel Tesfaye becomes a generational icon.
14. BigBang – “Bang Bang Bang” (Dir. Seo Hyun-Seung)
Lately, BigBang, the current reigning South Korean boy band, have been dropping hints that they might break up. And honestly, I hope they do. They won’t be able to keep topping themselves in the absurd-spectacle department much longer. It’s just not possible.
13. Kendrick Lamar – “King Kunta” (Dir. Director X & The Little Homies)
Director X and Kendrick Lamar reimagine the classic G-funk video as a burst of kinetic energy, and they film it in the sort of aspect ratio that immediately recalls cell-phone police brutality videos.
12. Lana Del Rey – “High By The Beach” (Dir. Jake Nava)
When Lana Del Rey dies, we should mount a framed photo of her with that grenade launcher on her tombstone. I can’t imagine she’s ever going to have a more iconic moment.
11. Slayer – “Repentless” (Dir. BJ McDonnell)
See, this kind of thing is why Slayer don’t get booked to perform in prison yards very often.
10. Joanna Newsom – “Sapokanikan” (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
A rare and valuable opportunity to watch a human being just glow.
9. Ariel Pink – “Dayzed Inn Daydreams” (Dir. Grant Singer)
Rick Wilder, the aging and deeply distinctive-looking glam rocker, would spend most of 2015 as a lurking, demonic presence in Singer’s videos for the Weeknd. Here, he’s the star of a slice-of-life verite drama that’s freaky just for the sheer fact that he’s in it, interacting with everyday people.
8. Rihanna – “Bitch Better Have My Money” (NSFW) (Dir. Rihanna & Megaforce)
One day, future societies will build statues of the blood-drenched Rihanna we see at the end of this video. And they will wonder, just as we wonder, what the fuck Rihanna’s accountant did.
7. M.I.A. – “Borders” (Dir. M.I.A.)
At the exact moment that America’s shittiest politicians are attempting to capitalize on anti-immigrant hysteria, M.I.A. comes along and makes this visual poem about the struggle of people who are forced to move. And she makes it look fucking breathtaking. That matters, too.
6. FKA twigs – M3LL155X (Dir. FKA twigs)
Other people just make a video for one song and call it a day. Twigs makes videos for five songs, directs them all herself, and finds ways to loosely connect them, largely through ideas about objectification and pregnancy and femininity and dance. And they’re all varying degrees of incredible. That’s a high bar, you know?
5. Grimes – “Flesh Without Blood/Life In The Vivid Dream” (Dir. Grimes)
Anyone can make a video with a bunch of weird shit happening. Only Grimes can give it this sort of style, can make it sing like this.
4. Vince Staples – “Señorita” (Dir. Ian Pons Jewell)
The unforgettable final shot turns this into one hell of a visual metaphor for the way people like me watch rap videos. For the way we watch everything, really.
3. Kendrick Lamar – “Alright” (Dir. Colin Tilley & The Little Homies)
We can, and probably should, talk all day about the layers of meaning flying around in this thing. But do you see the way it’s shot? It’s so beautiful.
I had a good time at Coachella this year, but I definitely did not have this good of a time. Maybe I was hanging out with the wrong people. (Watch this at Tidal, or, you know, Google around.)
1. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment – “Sunday Candy” (Feat. Chance The Rapper & Jamila Woods) (Dir. Austin Vesely, Ian Eastwood, & Chance The Rapper)
The best song Chance The Rapper has ever written is a love song for his grandmother, and to make a visual out of it, he staged this incandescently beautiful one-take high-school musical. There is enormous love in every second of this. Imagine being Chance’s grandmother and watching this for the first time.
Father, figurehead of the Atlanta DIY rap collective Awful Records, usually produces his own music. But for his new EP Someone Get These New Niggas,
he’s teaming up with Lex Luger, the Virginia producer who’s worked with
Waka Flocka Flame and Juicy J and who helped bring stormy crunk drums
back at the beginning of the decade. The first song we’ve heard from the
EP is called “Alleyoop Swish,” and it bangs a whole lot harder than any
Father song I’ve heard in the past, which has me excited to hear the
rest of the EP. In the JMP-directed video, a fisheye-lensed camera
slowly circles Father and guest rapper LuiDiamonds while the rest of the
Awful Records crew parties nearby. Watch it below, via Gorilla Vs. Bear.
Ratatat have shared a video for their Magnifique
track “Pricks Of Brightness.” Director Luis Cerveró takes the title
quite literally, focusing on pointy ends of different varieties. Someone
tries to stab themselves in between the fingers with a knife, there are
a ton of triangles (including some triangle-headed onlookers), and one
dude goes around and graffitis the word “PRICK” everywhere. It’s a bunch
of non-sequitur shots and I can’t figure out exactly how they all piece
together, but they’re all very well-composed nonetheless. The duo and a
rotating cast of drummers act as some sort of anchor.
When it comes to Star Wars, Ariana Grande is a traditionalist. The pop star just tweeted
a link to the following video, in which she debates with some aliens
about Han Solo’s encounter with the bounty hunter Greedo in the first
Star Wars movie, Episode IV: A New Hope. For the uninitiated,
Greedo (Paul Blake) confronted Solo (Harrison Ford) in the cantina at
Mos Eisley because Solo owed a debt to Jabba the Hutt. In the 1977
version of the film, Solo distracts Greedo with chitchat and then shoots
him under the table. In the 20th anniversary digital remaster, director
George Lucas changed the scene so that Greedo shoots first and Solo is
forced to return fire in self-defense, a misguided attempt to make Solo a
more sympathetic character. Now that you’ve got sufficient background,
enjoy Grande, in character as Boun T. Hunter, standing up for the
original cut while also murdering some aliens.
Ryan Hemsworth’s Alone For The First Time was released all the way back in 2014, but that’s no reason not
to make a totally sweet virtual reality video for Kotomi collaboration
“Surrounded.” So that’s what Hemsworth did, employing director Martin C.
Pariseau to film his exploits in a computer-generated realm by video
game company Ubisoft (Assassin’s Creed, etc.). The clip also
includes lots of real-world footage of the Canadian producer vibing out
in public while wearing an Oculus Rift headset.
“Separation Anxiety” is a track off of Faith No More’s first album in eighteen years, Sol Invictus, which was released back in May. The band has since performed on Fallon and Kimmel, and we’ve seen a video for the song “Sunny Side Up,”
which features Faith No More costumed as elderly people playing in a
retirement home. In the new video for “Separation Anxiety” (which Noisey premiered today), Faith No More’s song serves as the soundtrack to the 1955 horror film Dementia (also known as Daughter Of Horror).
Next year, Queens rap epicurean Meyhem Lauren will release his new album Piatto D’Oro, and we’ve already posted “Bonus Round,”
the Action Bronson/Roc Marciano/Big Body Bes collab that serves as the
first single. And now, Laurenovitch has made a video for a new track
called “Money In My Pocket,” as The FADER points out.
In the holiday-themed clip, he plays a “Black Santa” on what looks like
a sweltering Southern California day and learns that his gifts are not
all that popular. Calmatic directed the video.
ABRA released fine collaborations with salute and Father/Hiko Momoji this year, but she also shared her own solo debut album Rose. The Awful Records R&B singer has now shared a mesmerizing video for Rose track “Fruit,” gorgeously shot by JMP in a way that pairs well with the track. ABRA’s vocal delivery is
restrained yet haunting, as if a spectral question mark looms over the
whole song. The video matches this tension, showing ABRA singing and
dancing under an overcast sky in an eerily pristine apartment complex,
lingering around a quiet, disinterested man.
New Zealand dream pop trio Yumi Zouma create wispy, slow-motion dance
songs with the softest pastel tones imaginable. Their music is hushed
and oozy, made up of light keys and delicate guitars, yet urges forward
with a soft-slapping disco pulse. They’ve impressed us all year with
videos for “Alena” and “Catastrophe,”
and in September, they reissued their first two EPs as one modest 12″
package. Now Yumi Zouma are capping off the year with a video for “The
Second Wave.” Directed by Julian Vares, it features lovely footage of
the band playing the song and jiving by the ocean, somehow without the
use of electrical outputs.
Wiki, one third of the New York rap group Ratking, released a deeply impressive free-download solo album called Lil Me last week, and now, as Miss Info points out,
he’s got a new video for a song that doesn’t even show up on the LP:
The loping, Black Milk-produced “Hate Is Earned.” The new clip is
nothing like Wiki’s superhero-centric “Livin’ With My Moms” clip. Instead, it’s a quick-and-dirty thing — director Ryosuke Tanzawa filming Wiki as he stumbles around the streets of Tokyo, proving that dirtbag swagger is a universal language.
In a couple of months, Matmos, the Baltimore-based conceptual
production duo, will release a new album with a particularly loony
thread uniting all its sounds. The duo made their new album Ultimate Care II
entirely from sounds they recorded from their laundry machine. Local
luminaries like Dan Deacon and Horse Lords’ Max Eilbacher and Sam
Haberman helped out a bit, and we finally get to hear a bit of what this
washing-machine music sounds like. You can hear plenty of clangs and
liquid swishes on “Excerpt Five,” the album’s first single, but you can
also hear these beautiful synth-washes that don’t sound like anything my
washing machine does. Vicki Bennett and Peter Knight directed the video, which consists largely of clips from old laundry commercials.
Vancouver multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Krgovich makes silky, shiny
pop inspired by the city of Los Angeles. “Backlot Detail,” from his
forthcoming album The Hills, is a softly grandiose, ambient
number with a music video to match. Directed by Peter J. Brant and
edited by Krgovich himself, the clip takes place in suburban California.
Recorded with Colin Stewart in Vancouver at The Hive studios, The Hills
is simply something that Krgovich “wanted to share. In case people can
get something out of it.” He also shared some background on the
recording process:
I would write every day all day and then make dinner and
watch 30 Rock at night… what I guess people call sophistipop – Prefab
Sprout, Talk Talk, The Blue Nile, Sade, music that makes me feel like
I’m in the backseat of the car when I was a kid and it’s raining.
Ever since Purity Ring’s sophomore album, Another Eternity, was released back in March, we’ve been blessed with myriad videos of them performing amidst glowing crystals. We saw their dazzling light display on Kimmel and watched them play “Bodyache” in front of rows of glowing crystal salt lamps on Conan.
In the new Alex Fischer and Cecil Frena-directed video for “heartsigh,”
Purity Ring perform in a cave filled with glimmering natural splendors
and a ghostly dance crew.
Later this week, the Virginia rap great Pusha T will release his new album King Push: Darkest Before Dawn, and if you aren’t already excited, you should be. Today, Pusha’s followed his video for first single “Untouchable” with a new one for the bleak, Diddy-produced “Crutches, Crosses, Caskets.”
This one takes place on one of those horror-movie merry-go-rounds where
the horses wear gas masks and scantily-clad nuns smoke cigarettes. And
you know, no matter how hard I look, I can never find that carousel at
the county fair. Nevertheless, the real highlight is just the
opportunity to watch Pusha rap; he takes more obvious joy in what he’s
doing than almost anyone else. Kid Art directed the video.
The genre-bending Atlantan Raury released his debut album All We Need back in October, and we’ve already seen several videos for the album’s singles, including one for “Friends” (featuring Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello) and an epic clip for “Devil’s Whisper.”
Raury presents us with a new, stripped-back clip for the somewhat muted
“Trap Tears” today, which features fellow Atlanta-based rapper Key!
Chris Lee, otherwise known as Li Yuchun, is one of the biggest pop
stars in mainland China. She rose to fame a decade ago when she won the
national singing competition Super Girl, and since then, she’s released six albums and a huge pile of singles, also appearing in a few movies. (Shout out to Flying Swords Of Dragon Gate,
with Jet Li.) She now teamed up with the avant-pop pranksters of PC
Music, which seems like a fascinating move for everyone involved. With
PC Music, she’s releasing a new double A-sided single, with the new
songs “Real Love” and “Only You.” PC Music figurehead A. G. Cook
produced both, and they both have that hyperactive glittery sheen to
them. Lee sings both in English, and I honestly cannot tell whether this
counts as actual pop music or theoretical pop music. Either way, it
sounds pretty good! Kinga Burza has directed a glamorous video for both songs, which throws Lee into an impeccably lit hall of mirrors.
Miley Cyrus has shared a new video for “BB Talk,” a cut from her recent Dead Petz album with the Flaming Lips. Miley has been sporting a giant diaper and baby bottle
at some of her recent live shows, and she does that again here,
pretending to be an actual baby while explaining how gross she finds a
guy’s baby talk and PDA and “super cutey shit.”
Ra Ra Riot have shared a video for their new Rostam Batmanglij-featuring single “Water,” off their upcoming new album Need Your Light.
Frontman Wes Miles makes his way from Joshua Tree to the Los Angeles
shore, picking up his bandmates one-by-one for a bit before forging
ahead alone. Batmanglij, who co-wrote and produced the track, came up
with the concept for the video and co-directed it with Josh Goleman.
Miles expanded on the video’s creation in a Tumblr post:
Hi! Last month we bounced over to LA for a couple of days
to make a music video with our good (and suprememly talented) friends
Rostam and Josh [Goleman]. We set out for Joshua Tree at around 3:30 in
the morning, with our boxes of Joe, rollerblades, and analgesic
anamorphic lenses in tow, and by 5pm we were wrapping beneath the Santa
Monica pier. There were a bunch of stops in between that I don’t
particularly recall but apparently (spoiler alert) included wind farms,
street hockey, and a guy in a tunnel with a tambourine. I think I ate a
burrito at some point.
This video fits right into our whole (unintentional) MO for making
this record – working with old friends for whom we have a ton of respect
and, perhaps even more importantly, trust. Plus, Rostam had a hand in
writing, recording, and producing the song (Water), and so it makes
sense that he was involved with both the concept and execution of the
video. Hopefully the result is a testament to the burrito fun we had making it.
Wavves shows are chaotic, ruthless, beer-spilling endeavors where the
mosh is so intense you’ll feel your feet barely touching the ground,
squished shoulder-to-shoulder by pre-pubescent teens. The accompanying
video to their track “My Head Hurts” is a tour video of their recent
fall live dates, and it includes footage of frontman Nathan Williams
crowdsurfing, fleeting moments of the band’s backstage antics, and lots
of Pacman. The single is pulled from the band’s most recent album V, following single releases of “Way Too Much,” “Flamezesz,” and “Heavy Metal Detox.”
The video ends with Williams launching himself off of a balcony and
somersaulting into the loving arms of adoring fans below, who manage to
catch him and prevent a medical disaster. It’s like a trust exercise for
charismatic frontmen.
Cass McCombs is releasing a compilation album, A Folk Set Apart: Rarities, B-Sides & Space Junk, Etc.,
today, and he’s celebrating with a new video for “I Cannot Lie,” a 2003
one-off. The video is made up of scenes from the 2005 documentary Following Sean
about San Francisco’s counterculture, and all the clips were compiled
by Malcolm Pullinger — the track showed up on the soundtrack to the film
itself. Here are some words from McCombs about the video:
Alongside its original release on 7 inch in 2003, “I Cannot Lie” appeared in the documentary Following Sean
by Ralph Arlyck. I had been a fan of Ralph’s work, and my friend
Malcolm was working with him on the film and introduced us (I actually
wrote some of “Your Mother and Father” on Ralph’s piano). This video is
an excerpt from Following Sean, slightly reworked. These images
from the Bay Area in 1969 still seem relevant today, especially the
shots of protesters being beaten by militant police.
Oakland’s Jackson Phillips released Headcase,
his debut EP of dreamy, lo-fi indie-pop under the name Day Wave, back
in July. He followed it up last month with the 7″ single “Come Home Now,”
and now that song’s been given an appropriately fuzzy VHS video
consisting of moments captured on his recent US tour with Albert Hammond
Jr. and Blonde Redhead.
UK singer-songwriter Oscar has contributed a holiday original to Amazon Music’s Indie For The Holidays
compilation. The wistful new one is called “It’s Christmas Again,” and
it’s all about the suffocating feeling that you get when you realize
things don’t really change year-to-year. Fun stuff! It’s accompanied by a
video of him performing with the rest of his band. “This song goes out
to everyone who’s ever felt alone or like there’s something/someone
missing for them around this time of year,” he told NME.
“I’ve had quite varied Christmases in my life and so really I poured
them all into this song. I hope you have a good one.”
Jidenna came to us by way of “Classic Man” a break-out single that was later remixed with a Kendrick Lamar feature and honored as our own Tom Breihan’s favorite song of the year.
Jidenna is a Janelle associate and Monáe member of the Wondaland Arts
Society, and his song “Long Live The Chief” was released on their recent
EP, Wondaland Presents: The Eephus. It was never released as a
single, but now there’s an excellent video for the track. Jidenna joins
a funeral procession to perform a series of hyper-choreographed dances.
It’s all filmed in black and white with a few striking red accents.
The 20th annual Feel Bad About Your Body Awards Victoria’s Secret
Fashion Show was last night, and the Weeknd provided the musical
entertainment alongside Ellie Goulding and Selena Gomez. Abel Tesfaye —
who also released a video for “In The Night” yesterday — did his hit song “Can’t Feel My Face,” while Goulding did her 50 Shades Of Grey
song “Love Me Like You Do” and “Army,” and Selena Gomez did a medley of
“Hands To Myself” and “Me & My Girls.” All were flanked by gorgeous
models, and definitely did not have to be there in person for the
runway walks soundtracked by their songs. Nonetheless, watch videos of
all the performances below.
Love Me Like You Do - From "Fifty Shades Of Grey" (Live from the Victoria’s Secret 2015)
Ellie Goulding - Army (Live from the Victoria’s Secret 2015 Fashion Show)
Hands To Myself/Me & My Girls - Medley (Live from the Victoria’s Secret 2015 Fashion Show)
London rockers Leif Erikson (named for the Viking explorer who beat
Christopher Columbus to America) released their debut single “Looking
For Signs” last month, and its video is out in the world now. The song
is one of the most purely enjoyable classic rock updates I’ve
encountered recently, like the weary heartland sound of Kurt Vile and
the War On Drugs tweaked ever so slightly in the direction of the
Amazing’s airborne prog. At the risk of reducing this blurb to a RIYL
list, fans of Fleet Foxes, Fleetwood Mac, and My Morning Jacket will
also probably dig this. The video tracks what appears to be a woman’s
supernatural journey between the bathtub and the great outdoors. It’s
pretty, but I’m here for the music; comfort food tends to dominate the
menu throughout the holiday season, after all.
Madonna gave an impromptu performance in Paris’ Place de la
Republique last night following her concert at Bercy arena. The Plaza
has become a massive memorial to those who were killed in the attacks on
11/13, and Madonna paid tribute to the dead by singing several songs
alongside her 10-year-old son David. She began with “Ghosttown” off of
her latest album Rebel Heart, then segued into John Lennon’s
“Imagine,” and finished with a moving and lively rendition of “Like A
Prayer.” All of the songs were performed acoustically. According to the BBC, Madonna addressed onlookers by stating the following:
Everybody knows why we’re here… we just want to sing a
few songs about peace, just to spread love and joy, and to pay our
honour and respect to the people who died almost four weeks ago. And to
spread light… we all need it.
Trans narratives are starting to become more visible, thankfully and finally — Transparent comes back this Friday! — and John Grant has contributed another one to the canon with the video for his Grey Tickles, Black Pressure
track “Down Here.” It was directed by Lisa Gunning, who takes us back
to ’70s suburbia and explores it on a micro level — one person’s desire
to be part of the synchronized swimming team leads to a journey of
self-discovery. Watch via The Guardian below.
Novelty Daughter is the project of Brooklyn-based musician Faith Harding — she released her self-titled debut EP back in 2013, plus a fewone-offs since then. (One of her earliest songs, “American Dreams,” was my jam a while back, and I played it non-stop for a few months straight.) Harding will release her debut album, Semigoddess, next year, and today she’s sharing the lead single from it, “Day Of Inner Fervor,” with a Dennis Moran-directed
video that captures all the weirdness and wonder that is her take on
pop. With a hypnotic backbeat and that soaring, mesmerizing voice of
hers, the track feels like a welcome fever dream, incorporating disco
and jazz and a free-flowing sense of time to craft a wholly unique
experience.
The Weeknd has just shared a cinematic new video for “In The Night” off of Beauty Behind The Madness, directed by the filmmaking team of Alex Lee and Kyle Wightman, aka BRTHR.
The neon-tinged, action-packed clip stars Abel Tesfaye’s fashion model
girlfriend Bella Hadid as a dancer who sure seems to know her way around
a weapon.
Conor Oberst’s activist punk band Desaparecidos released their first album in 13 years, Payola, earlier this year, and today they’ve shared an animated video for “Golden Parachutes.” It was directed by Luke and Joe McGarry, who take us on a journey through history — the Salem witch trials, the Boston Tea Party, an 1860s New York City protest, the Triangle factory fire, Kent State, and Occupy Wall Street — as the band members appear in period-appropriate garb and get killed off one by one.
All signs point to Azealia Banks being a generally unpleasantperson, but Broke With Expensive Taste ended up being a welcome surprise. While there won’t be any new music from Banks until at least March 2016 due to some label drama, today she did share a video for “Count Contessa,” a track that was supposed to be on a second Fantasea mixtape that never materialized. The video, which was directed by Rony Alwin for Fun! Mag,
seems to have been shot in Kuta Beach, Bali, and features Banks getting
her fortune read by the ocean and then proceeding to dance in front of
the waves for the remainder.
Luke Top is the frontman for the Californian Afrobeat party-starters
Fool’s Gold, a truly great live band if you ever get the chance to see
them. Early next year, he’ll release a solo album, and the first single
is “On The Beach,” which turns his band’s rippling, percussive style
slightly toward indie-pop. Stephen Paul filmed the song’s video at what
appears to be an abandoned, destroyed, graffiti-flecked Californian
waterpark. The video’s own YouTube description calls it “ruin porn.”
Madeira is the glossy solo project of New Zealand-native Kim Pflaum, former member of the pop group Yumi Zouma. Her newest single, “Let Me Down,” just surfaced from Ryan Hemsworth’s Secret Songs
series. It’s a classic break-up song built with chillwavey tones that
resemble her previous band, and its upbeat drive brings heartbreak into
an optimistic light. The accompanying video is a picturesque story
depicting Pflaum driving across beachy landscapes and casting personal
artifacts into the ocean. According to The Fader she directed the video and shot it on location in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The Silence is born from previous members of Ghost — the now-defunct
Japanese psych group, not the theatrical Swedish metal ghouls. Frontman
Masaki Batoh’s band released Hark The Silence last month, and we’ve already shared their visuals for “Little Red Record Company.”
Now they’ve dropped a brain-rattling second video from the album.
“Ancient Wind Part 3″ is a six-minute doozy of Lightning Bolt-style
power guitars played in 7/8 time with a back-up flute and organ. The
accompanying video is probably what a text-book definition of “trippy”
would look like. It’s a tumbling kaleidoscope of colors set note-to-note
to the chaotic track.
Chris Farren’s Christmas album, Like A Gift From God Or Whatever, came out last year, but ’tis the season once again, and this year Farren’s holiday classic™ has gotten a vinyl pressing, a new song
featuring Into It. Over It.’s Evan Weiss, and now a new video for
“Chris Farren’s Disney’s Frozen.” It’s a stop-motion clip directed by Wine & Pop Tarts, featuring a cut-out Farren and googly-eyed Elsa, plus some Minion cameo appearances. Watch it via Brooklyn magazine below.
METZ released their second album’s worth of hardcore bangers, appropriately titled II,
earlier this year. They’re a band whose energy thrives in live
performances, so they’ve been on tour pretty much ever since, and their
new video for “Spit You Out” attempts to recreate all of the mayhem of
their live sets. The sharply-cut video was edited by Scott Cudmore, and
directed by the band themselves, and it moves along just as frantically
as you’d expect. Watch it via Noisey below.
“Ankles” is one of the highlights on best new band Palm’s debut full-length, Trading Basics,
and it has just gotten a Greg O’Connell-directed video to go along with
it. There’s talking paper clips, cascading file folders, an assembly
line stapler, a man reading a newspaper who eventually gets buried under
a messy gust of papers — all rendered in crisp, Tron-style visuals. It’s a weird video for an equally weird album.
British indie-poppers Field Day released their single “The Noisy Days Are Over” back in October in anticipation of their forthcoming album, Commontime.
Peter and David Brewis framed this song as a conversation between
friends, and in the new Andy Martin-directed video, a man traipses
through a series of landscapes as friends, strangers, and TV
personalities berate him.
Former Saturday Night Live castmates Fred Armisen and Bill
Hader like ’70s soft rock so much that they formed a band, the Blue Jean
Committee, and released an EP, Catalina Breeze,
dedicated to spoofing it. They’ve now made a video for that EP’s title
track, and it never breaks character. It’s exactly the sort of video
that bands were making in the pre-MTV era: Mostly performance or studio
footage, a few shots of anonymous musician dudes goofing off, absolutely
nothing else. This one even has the
can-you-believe-we’re-playing-this-arena? shot. Hader and Armisen never
go out of their way to be funny. It’s… really something. Rhys Thomas and
Alex Buono direct.
Brit Hannah Rodgers, the teenage singer-songwriter who records under the name Pixx, released her Fall In EP last year, and we posted the video
for the title track. In her new video for the EP track “Deplore,” we
see her looking impressively gothed-out while singing expressionlessly
on some rainswept British moor. She doesn’t look particularly worried,
even when some unseen force is dragging her across the ground or hanging
her upside-down. The Marshall Darlings directed the video.
Chairlift have a knack for making vivid, even iconic music videos
without appearing to spend a ton of money on them. Most recently, we saw
the apocalypse-chic of their “Ch-Ching” clip. And now they’ve made another one, for the melodically giddy new track “Romeo.” This time around, the that go-directed
clip shows Caroline Polachek, glammed-out and newly bobbed, running
through a landscape of video arcades and noodle shops while some sort of
mysterious Terminator figure pursues her.
Sauna Youth are an English four-piece whose music feels like a punk
overture to a high-speed rollercoaster thrill ride. Their video for “The
Bridge,” pulled from their full-length release Distractions, sees the band — including Lindsay Corstorphine from Primitive Parts on guitar — looking too-cool-for-school and playing their instruments
amidst an array of youths clad in gym clothes. They seem like the artsy
emo kids in grade school you were always too scared to talk to (unless
you were one of them), and that’s a reflection of their music:
explosive, no-holds barred, high-energy punk. The boy-girl vocals
coalesce effortlessly into one voice a la Times New Viking, and the
damaged guitars are the fuse to a never-ending circuit of blazing
stamina.
Björk worked with the producer Arca on her most recent album, the heart-ripping Vulnicura.
And now, in making a video for the album track “Mouth Mantra,” she’s
teamed up with Arca’s most frequent collaborator, the bugged-out
visionary Jesse Kanda. It’s an
inspired pairing, especially when you consider that Kanda is probably
the closest thing we have now to Chris Cunningham, Björk’s “All Is Full Of Love”
director. For this clip, Kanda used some kind of hyper-advanced camera
to film much of it from the inside of Björk’s mouth, and so much of what
we see is a twisted, terrifying psychedelic whorl of tongue and teeth.
But the camera also pulls back long enough to show us Björk in full
revelry. Dazedpremiered the video this morning. Watch it below, and read some words about it from Björk and Kanda.
Björk writes:
i am so extremely grateful to jesse to be up for going on
this journey …. it was brave of him to take it on and i feel spoiled
having witnessed him grow , making hi tech mouth models and inventing
cameras all to match a little therapeutic song about the throat . his
dedication and devotion is overwhelming !!!
i am especially grateful for those sassy dancefloor moments we managed to squeeze in there aswell : true magic !!
Kanda writes:
If there’s one thing I’d like for people to take away
from this video, it’s the power of vulnerability. That is what Björk’s
album Vulnicura is all about to me, and hopefully this video
reflects that. It’s about having the courage to express yourself and
seeing yourself in that mirror. Doing something that scares the shit out
of you and sharing it, growing from it, spreading love and courage to
others and making the world a warmer place to be and relate to each
other.
Making this video was as much a terrifying horrific experience to me
as it was a dream come true and pure ecstasy. It was a year-long roller
coaster which triggered and ran parallel to some major growth in my own
self as well. I have no words to express how grateful I am to Björk for
this extremely intimate creation and her love.
Thank u everyone on the team who made this possible – the miraculous
John Nolan and his team for the animatronics, beautiful warrior Inge
Grognard for the face art and support, ever loving Juliette and Hannah
at Prettybird UK, beautiful warm womb crew in Iceland and London, everyone at Dentsu Lab Tokyo and Rhizomatiks Research, lovely Ellie and Pegah, Derek and Andrew at One Little Indian,
and my sister Alejandro of course for the beats and looking at it
million times with me. Also my computer for not melting down!
Julian Casablancas, from the Strokes, and Jehnny Beth, from Savages,
are two of the most charismatic rock frontpeople to come along this
century. And as we learned
last month, they’ve now teamed up to cover “Boy/Girl,” a song
originally recorded in 1984 by Sort Sol, the pioneering Danish punk
band, and Lydia Lunch, the no wave trailblazer. The cover, which appears
to be a total one-off, is just as fast and bleary and out-of-control as
the 1984 original, and the new music video for the cover is a
shot-for-shot remake of the original. Warren Fu directed it, and regular
Savages collaborator Giorgio Testi filmed Beth’s parts in London.
Savages producer Johnny Hostile had the idea of Casablancas and Beth
teaming up to record it, and of the original, Casablancas says, “I had
never heard the song before and still have no idea what the hell the
words are talking about. It sounds like a Danish dude trying sound like
he’s saying English sounding words.” Check out the new video and the
original one below.
Daniel Lopatin’s music under the Oneohtrix Point Never moniker is
somewhat averse to description. It’s disorienting and sends our audial
perceptions into a dizzy whirl. His latest video is part of a series for
Channel 4’s Random Acts, which features a string of collaborations between Warp artists and filmmakers. It features bits from his last album, Garden of Delete (AKA G.O.D.), and is equally boggling. The video pastes parts from “Freaky Eyes,” “Ezra” and “Mutant Standard”
together into a compact three-minutes. Similar to the album,
“Repossession Sequence” is a surreal, near-horrifying enigma of a video
that’s hard to turn away from. Is that hovering metallic thing trying to
speak through a disembodied head? What is it saying? Is this a metaphor
for human communication? Who knows.
Oneohtrix Point Never’s also announcing a world tour with a new live
set-up. It includes long-time collaborator Nate Boyce, who directed this
insane video.
Last year, Sam Ray (of Ricky Eat Acid and Teen Suicide) released the first and perhaps last full-length under his Julia Brown moniker, An Abundance Of Strawberries. It was the follow-up to 2013’s To Be Close To You,
and was distributed at first only by sending him an email and, later,
via a Dropbox link. Receiving it felt personal and special in a way that
getting most albums nowadays does not, which fit with the intimate
nature of the music itself. But the record’s too good to stay a rarity,
and I’m happy to see that it’s getting a physical and wide digital
release via Joy Void Recordings
early next year, which will hopefully draw an even bigger audience. To
celebrate, there’s a new Linnea Nugent-directed video for “Snow Day,”
which you can watch via Spin below.
Sometimes you get really drunk and wake up the next morning feeling very bad about yourself. It’s happened to me,
and it’s undoubtedly happened to you. Margo Price’s video for her
single “Hurtin’ (On The Bottle)” illustrates what it looks like when
you’re “riding high on low expectations,” as she so eloquently puts it.
Price is the first country artist to sign to Jack White’s Third Man
Records, and this video is our first exposure to her album Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. Watch below by way of The Fader.
Since breaking off from the Fiery Furnaces a few years back, Eleanor
Friedberger’s reinvented herself as a singer-songwriter quite
effortlessly. She gave us a new song, “He Didn’t Mention His Mother,” about a month ago along with a trailer for her upcoming album, New View, the follow-up to 2013’s fantastic Personal Record.
Now she’s shared the video for that single. Directed by Mark &
Spencer, it shows her rehearsing at her upstate New York home with her
backing band Icewater and recording the album at producer Clemens
Knieper’s Sunnyland Studio, interspersed with shots of everyone hanging
around in the autumnal surroundings. The visuals are beautifully shot,
and Friedberger’s as poised as ever.
Every year since 2007, DJ Earworm has mashed up all of the best and
biggest pop songs of the year into one. This year is no different, and
the San Francisco-based DJ (real name Jordan Roseman) has made a new one
for 2015, subtitled “50 Shades Of Pop.” All the usual suspects are
present: Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Drake, The Weeknd, One Direction,
Adele, and a whole bunch more. As always, it’s cleverly done and a lot
of fun to watch them all fit together. Check it out via Billboard .
The Libertines did the whole “drunk in love” thing really well in the years before Beyoncé released an excellent homage
to that very particular feeling, and the British band is still doing a
good job illustrating the kind of romance that blossoms in a bar booth.
Their new video for “You’re My Waterloo” chronicles a young couple as
they frolic throughout a moonlit European city as Peter Doherty drawls:
“You’re the only lover I had who ever slept with a knife.” Roger Sargent
and Carl Barat direct.
The L.A. band Franky Flowers make big, surging, melodic lo-fi
indie-rock. The band’s frontman, also named Franky Flowers, is 17, which
means he wasn’t even born when this stuff was originally being made,
but he seems to have a handle on it anyway. Their single “Sneakers
(Sneaky Thing)” has some of the same big-guitar buzz as prime Built To
Spill, and that is a very good thing. The tracks’ video is all buzzing,
distorted VHS imagery of the band at play, and you can watch.
The Staves’ hushed, intricate, Justin Vernon-produced folk LP If I Was is one of our favorite albums of the year, and we’ve already posted a couple of live videos of them performing the rapturous “Make It Holy.” Today, they’ve shared a
proper video for the track. They must’ve recorded the footage for it
last winter, when they were working on the album at Vernon’s Wisconsin
studio. In the stately, mostly black-and-white clip, we see the three
sisters in the band working with Vernon and hanging out in that wintry
landscape. There’s not a whole lot to the video, but it’s fun to watch
talented people who really like each other working together.
Stove’s debut Is Stupider
is filled with the kind of songs that make you want to go on long
drives, smoke a lot of cigarettes, and, I guess, take off your shirt and
go through some emotional self-flagellation in the middle of dry
nowhere, which is exactly what Steve Hartlett does in the video for
“Aged Hype,” a quick-paced highlight from the former Ovlov frontman’s
new album. The clip was directed by Jeremy Aquilino.
Back in July we premiered the Julian Casablancas-produced “Fire Away” from Mexican rock band Rey Pila’s Cult Records debut album The Future Sugar.
Today we share the accompanying music video, which is in-keeping with
the track’s synth-heavy New Wave vibes. The entire video is pixellated,
rendering the entire band and their environment into 8-bit arcade game
mode. You follow the band as a player in a first-person car-racing game,
advancing through levels and trying not to get shot down by rogue
helicopters and weird alien-type-looking-thingies. The boss battle sees
you fighting a really terrifying giant robotic tarantula, and then its
head explodes. Wonderful stuff.
Jay Worthy and Sean House, aka LNDN DRGS, shared a full album of delectable G-funk tracks for free last week via Fool’s Gold. AKTIVE featured performances from Krayzie Bone, ReTCH, and also the late A$AP Yams.
Now they’ve dropped a video for title track “Aktive.” Directed by
Shuttershot, it shows featured artist YG Hootie rapping, romping, and
carousing around the streets of ComptonBompton.
Laura Stevenson’s “Torch Song”
is just that, and now it’s got a similarly rousing video to go along
with it. Stevenson and her merry band of glittery and colorful teens
make their way into an empty high school and transform a hapless teacher
and a bored janitor into shining ’80s stars, giving them a makeover and
coupling worthy of any coming-of-age movie. The clip was co-directed by
Stevenson and Kate Sweeney.
The Posterz are an upstart Montreal crew currently exuding that
combustible energy unique to unwieldy young rap groups. When I’m
watching the video for “Want It All,” from their recent Junga EP,
it reminds me of Odd Future if they had more of a Tribe sensibility or
A$AP Mob if they were still kids. When only the audio is on, I think of
Kendrick Lamar doing his best ODB impression.
But the point isn’t which classic and modern influences are swirling
in the mix; the point is that they’re building something exciting out of
them, something fresh. The beats are raw and retro but just polished
enough to shine. The lyrics are delivered with a swagger that makes even
boilerplate rap boasts sound like radical declarations of power. They
scream “Fuck a cop!” on the hook and joke “No, you can’t use this
fucking part of the beat to make a loop” during a breakdown between
verses. “Then we came up, fucked the game up” — let’s hope so.
There’s so many moving parts to Robyn’s new video for her La
Bagatelle Magique project’s track “Love Is Free” that I’m not really
exactly what’s going on, but I do know all of it is very
enticing. It starts out with Robyn and featured guest Maluca hanging
around in bed and drinking some tea, but it quickly expands in scope to
go behind-the-scenes of the music video itself, then to whatever
funhouse Robyn and director SSION decided to construct. There’s an
elaborate kitchen preparation with a bunch of men in worksuits, a
subtitled breakup scene, and a fly that just won’t seem to go away. Plus
some classic Robyn spin-dancing!
“I loved working with SSION on this video,” Robyn said in a press
release. The thoughts Maluca, Markus, and I had about how to materialise
‘Love Is Free’ seemed to find a perfect place in Cody’s fantastic
world. Flesh and paint and dreams, both good ones and bad ones.”
In 2013, Air’s Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Bang Gang’s Bardi Johannsson
formed Starwalker, and early last year they released their debut EP, Losers Can Win, and a one-off single called “Blue Hawaii.”
Today, the duo has shared a new track called “Le President” accompanied
by a beautifully shot video by Luis Vanegas. It’ll appear on their
forthcoming debut album, which is due out next year. Check out the song
and clip via Pitchfork below.
“How Many Blankets Are In The World?” is the sparest track on Saintseneca’s Such Things,
the one where Zac Little howls about existential crises and Smashing
Pumpkins nostalgia over nothing but minimal ukulele plucking and faint
ambient sound. Its video is accordingly simple and beautiful. Director
Jon Washington, who made the band’s great “Bad Ideas” video,
filmed Little wandering around inside a Columbus drainage tunnel, and
his shots use the light at the end of the tunnel the same way the song
uses white noise. Here’s Little on the clip’s genesis:
I first explored this tunnel with some friends. After
hearing the eerie echo of footsteps and voices, I knew it would a good
place to sing a song.
We just named Waxahatchee’s Ivy Tripp one of the best albums of the year,
and today she’s shared a video for standout track “La Loose.” It was
directed by Galaxie 500’s Naomi Yang, and features Katie Crutchfield
walking around in a field picking petals off a flower, singing into the
camera in front of a giant abandoned ferris wheel, and repurposing old
flannel. Here’s how Yang described the video:
“La Loose” is a song of love and longing, though dark at
its edges with feelings of ambivalence. I wanted the video to be a
visual equivalent to the song lyric, “a charming picture of hysteria in
love” — a spinning emotional kaleidoscope of desire and rejection,
adoration and anger, hope and despair. For this reason I set the video
in mirror-twin locations: an abandoned, haunted amusement park and a
thriving farm out of a beautiful dream.
It looked like Sia had moved on from Maddie Ziegler, the very
talented young dancer who appeared so much in the pop singer’s previous
album cycle — she used a different little girl in the “Alive” video, and none of the artwork for her upcoming album This Is Acting has featured Ziegler so far. But, thankfully, the fruitful collaboration between the two is not done quite yet: On The Ellen Show
earlier today, Ziegler returned to dance along to “Alive.” It’s very
similar to all of their other performances, but that means it’s still
worth a look.
Earlier this year, the up-and-coming R&B singer BJ The Chicago
Kid recruited the rapper Joey Bada$$ and the great comedian Hannibal
Burress for his sunny, loping, Heavy D-interpolating “Nothin’ But Love.”
Burress sadly isn’t in BJ’s new video for the song. Instead, the clip
captures BJ and Bada$$ strutting down a sunny, tree-lined street. Things
eventually move to Times Square. Check it out below, via Pitchfork.
We just named Speedy Ortiz’s sophomore album, Foil Deer, one of the year’s best, and today the band debuted a new video for the ominous song “My Dead Girl.” Sadie Dupuis once said
that she wrote the song when she felt physically threatened by a few
guys who started knocking on her car window as she sat alone on an empty
road on the Fourth Of July. It’s one of the album’s darker tracks, and
the accompanying David Lynch-themed video plays up its eerie ambiguity.
Drama unfolds as Speedy Ortiz performs in Twin Peaks’ notorious
casino One Eyed Jacks, and Dupuis goes on a date with a questionable
puppet. Elle Schneider directs; watch below via Vanity Fair.
Line & Circle released their latest album, Split Figure, last month and today they debuted the video for “Like A Statue.”
The accompanying Jordan Satmary-directed clip features a collection of
found footage that’s been warped and re-ordered to suit the band’s
spiraling, shoegazey aesthetic. This one’s for fans of wedding videos.
As promised,
human Muppet Dave Grohl got into a drum battle with actual Muppet and
fellow percussionist Animal at the end of this week’s episode of ABC’s Muppets
reboot. They trade some barbs and show off their skills — can you guess
who wins? The episode airs tonight (12/1) in the United States on ABC
if you want to watch the action, but it aired last night in Canada, so
you can spoil yourselves.
