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

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

Charli XCX – “SuperLove (Yeasayer Remix)” Video

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

Blood Orange – “Time Will Tell” Video

Blood Orange’s fantastic Cupid Deluxe is out today, and so is the video for album closer “Time Will Tell,” a warm-blooded coda that calls back to “Champagne Coast” from 2011′s Coastal Grooves among other components. Hynes explains the track’s origin:

“Time Will Tell” is the closing track from the album CUPID DELUXE. The song itself was recorded live in a one take that lasted about 15 minutes I ad-libbed the vocals recalling lyrics from songs of mine and a song by Adam Bainbridge (which he was unaware i was going to do). Adam was on the drum machine, Blue May on guitar, Sam Beste on piano, & Tawiah on backing vocals. I then took some of my vocals from towards the end and overlaid it as a backing vocal.

For the video, director Alan Del Rio Ortiz has Hynes in all white at a white piano, then standing up and busting a move per choreography by Juri Onuki that involves a chair and a coat rack. It’s the kind of low-budget, highly expressive wildness you could imagine appearing on early ’80s MTV, which is to say, it’s oh so very Blood Orange.

Keep Shelly In Athens – “Oostende”

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

Google Glass Gets Into The Music Game

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

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

Teengirl Fantasy – “Nun” Video

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

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

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

Sampha – “Happens” Video

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

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

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

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

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

Malkmus is back! Stephen Malkmus and his band the Jicks made their big return to the stage last week in Portland, and now they’ve announced plans for their excellently titled new album Wig Out At Jagbags. Here’s what Malkmus has to say about the album in a statement:

Wig Out at Jagbags is inspired by Cologne, Germany, Mark Von Schlegell, Rosemarie Trockel, Von Spar and Jan Lankisch, Can and Gas; Stephen-Malkmus-imagined Weezer/Chili Peppers, Sic Alps, UVA in the late 80′s, NYRB, Aroma Charlottenburg, inactivity, Jamming, Indie guys tring to sound Memphis, Flipper, Pete Townshend, Pavement, The Joggers, The NBA and home life in the 2010′s…

“Lariat” is the loose, scrappy, ebullient first single, and its video, directed by Leblanc + Cudmore, is a sort-of lyric video in which a charming young lady, in an apartment full of very serious people, translates the lyrics into French. I don’t know why it works, but it does.

Drake - “Worst Behavior” (Explitic Video)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arcade Fire - "Afterlife" (Official Video)

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

Guards – “Coming True” (Official Video)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Official video for SixToes' Low Guns Featuring Dave Gahan.

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

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

Directed by Victor Pakpour

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

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