5/05/2014

The Head And The Heart - “Summertime” (Official Video)



In addition to animating his own videos, Calgary creative genius Chad VanGaalen sometimes does visuals for his Sub Pop labelmates. We’ve seen him produce rad clips for J Mascis and METZ, and now he’s made some unnervingly beautiful nature scenes for the Head And The Heart’s “Summertime.” The song, for an excellent synth-inflected pop tune from 2013′s Let’s Be Still, marks violinist and backup singer Charity Rose Thielen’s first go-round on lead vocals with the band. Her influence is a big reason why “Summertime” became such a refreshing departure for a band that typically trades in roots-rock. Even without VanGaalen’s wild animations, it would hit like a flash of color.

Chief Keef - “How It Go” (Official Video)



We’ve been hearing for a while that Chief Keef is on the comeback trail. After a couple of disappointing mixtapes, he’s been to rehab, quit drinking lean, and understood how bullshit his recent music has been. And while his new track “How It Go” doesn’t exactly announce a new readiness to dominate the rap landscape, it’s an effective bit of Future-esque Auto-Tuned wheeze-rap. In the barebones new video from director Northstar, a stone Keef stands up tall against the Chicago skyline.

Spanish Gold - “Out On The Street” (Official Video)



Spanish Gold is a new rock band featuring Patrick Hallahan (My Morning Jacket), guitarist Adrian Quesada (formerly of Grupo Fantasma) and guitarist and lead vocalist Dante Schwebel (City and Colour, formerly of Hacienda). They view their music as a product of early MTV, back when the network’s focus was music and a bunch of genres coexisted semi-peacefully on the airwaves. “Out In The Street” captures that spirit of porous genre boundaries, but like Hallahan’s other band MMJ or Schwebel’s buddies the Black Keys, Spanish Gold’s songs are more likely to remind you of a time before MTV even existed. This one is a smooth-riding classic rock track with a rollicking video to match.

Watch A Teaser For Arcade Fire’s “We Exist” Video Starring Andrew Garfield



During Coachella’s second weekend, Andrew Garfield (Spider-Man) appeared in a dress and wig during Arcade Fire’s performance of “We Exist,” the forthcoming Reflektor single about a son explaining to his father that he’s gay. (Before playing the song Win Butler told the crowd, “The right to marry anyone you want is a human rights issue.”) Now it looks like Garfield and the band were actually filming a music video; Arcade Fire just uploaded this teaser for it to YouTube.

Beyoncé - "Pretty Hurts" (Official Video)



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Music video by Beyoncé performing Pretty Hurts. (C) 2013 Columbia Records, a Division of Sony Music Entertainment

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Doe Paoro - “Walking Backwards” Video



“Walking Backwards,” the excellent single from Doe Paoro’s S. Carey-produced Ink On The Walls EP, now has a video by director Braden Lee. Doe has always been one for elaborate costumed videos, and this one delivers on that front with a crew of ominous-looking robed dancers that might be Sith Lords, ninjas or grim reapers. Notice that Doe’s own robe changes from white to black over the course of the video; try to make out the significance of that as you watch below.

Trash Talk x Flatbush Zombies - “97.92″ (Official Video)



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

Once upon a time, music videos would spring forth from advances in filmmaking technology, and those advances would fuel the ideas behind the video. (Think of the morphing in “Black Or White,” or the live-action/animation rotoscoping happening in “Take On Me.”) This video exists because someone figured out that, if you put a 360-degree camera on a remote-controlled drone, you could take the fisheye-lens visual-distortion principle to freaky, hallucinatory new levels. It just looks awesome.

Porches. - “Leather” Video



Aaron Maine’s experimental pop project Porches. (the period is part of the band’s name) recently released a new split cassette with Mdou Moctar that included the sad and dreamy track “Leather.” Now that song gets a fitting video treatment, which follows Maine around the streets of New York, captured on a grainy lo-fi video.

Tara Jane O’Neil - “Wordless In Woods” Video


Earlier this year Tara Jane O’Neil released a new solo album Where Shines New Light which included the vaporous “Wordless In Woods.” Deeply meditative and tranquil, it has now gotten a video from frequent Jim O’Rourke collaborator Makino Takashi, which wraps footage of trees with a gauzy, summer drenched haze. Visually and aurally it’s a very impressionistic experience.

Arcade Fire - "Normal Person" (with Aaron Paul intro)



The live performance recorded at The Roxy in Los Angeles, CA - April 21, 2014. Air date: May 1, 2014. Aaron Paul being a huge Arcade Fire fan introduces the band.

Riff Raff - “Instagram” (Official Video)



Things have been relatively quiet on the Riff Raff front ever since the mercurial rapper dropped his DJ Mustard-produced single “How To Be The Man” and his Action Bronson collab “I Shoulda Won A Grammy” a couple of months ago. But Riff Raff’s album Neon Icon is supposedly still forthcoming, and now he’s got a short new songs called “Instagram,” a tribute to the girls who take pictures of themselves and then let everyone see those pictures. We, as a society, have now lived long enough that we get to hear a song that uses a Trinidad James sample as a hook. And the video features a lot of girls taking pictures of themselves.

Peter Matthew Bauer - “Philadelphia Raga” (Official Video)



Peter Matthew Bauer continues to make the most of life after the Walkmen. He’s released two songs from his solo debut Liberation!: “Latin American Ficciones” and “Philadelphia Raga.” Now comes the official video for “Philadelphia Raga,” a piece of modern Americana in which Bauer cruises through Philly in the back of a pickup and then crams himself and his backing band into a bar for an intimate performance.

Young Thug & Metro Boomin - “The Blanguage” Video



On their great collaborative track “The Blanguage,” the unstable Atlanta rap molecule Young Thug and the excellent producer Metro Boomin turned Drake’s “The Language” into a hallucinatory, unhinged Auto-Tune smear, a deeply weird rap banger that somehow grows more intoxicating every time I hear it. The song’s new video, from director Cam Kirk, is a deeply halfassed low-budget affair, the kind of thing that unwittingly shows non non-glamorous rap-star life can be (that empty kitchen!). But with its hazy filters and weird lighting, and with the strange image of Thug wearing Ugg boots — it ends up fitting the song nicely anyway.

Maria Minerva - “Galaxy” Video



Maria Minerva recently put out a new album of her signature lo-fi but still glitzy pop music, and now she shares a video for the track “Galaxy.” The Marko Krunic-directed clip drenches a city street in a creepy miasma as the camera shifts in and out of focus. It’s a dreamy, slightly unsettling clip that’s nonetheless oddly glamorous, just like the song.

Sisyphus - “Take Me” Official Video (NSFW)



Sisyphus is Sufjan Stevens’s new art-pop trio with kinda-unlikely collaborators Son Lux and Serengeti, and Stevens seems to be using it as a way to cut loose. Consider, if you will, the “Booty Call” video, a strange piece of party-rap pastiche that threw Sufjan and Serengeti into a room full of girls making out. The new video for the mellow and seductive “Take Me” isn’t as silly as that, but it does have Sufjan singing amidst dancing, mostly-naked bodies, something we might not have imagined that guy doing a few years ago. Ryan Dickie directed the prettily-shot video, full of slants of light and artful editing.

5/01/2014

The Black Keys - “Fever” (Official Video)



Unstoppable arena-rock monsters the Black Keys are about to unleash their latest Danger Mouse-produced album Turn Blue upon us, and they shared the tense and new-wavey single “Fever” a few weeks ago. The new video for “Fever” casts Dan Auerbach as a sweaty, pomaded, exceedingly low-rent TV preacher, and it doesn’t do much more than alternate shots of a testifying Auerbach with stock footage of Pentecostal church crowds. For a song that’s already all over rock radio, this is not much of a video. Theo Wenner, the song of Rolling Stone founder Jann, directed it. The cynic in me believes that Wenner probably wasn’t the best available director but that the band secured like five Rolling Stone covers for themselves in hiring him. On the other hand, the Black Keys are Harmony Korine collaborators, and there’s definitely something Korine-esque happening here.

Hercules & Love Affair - “I Try To Talk To You” (Feat. John Grant) Official Video



Next month, Andy Butler’s exultant disco-house project Hercules & Love Affair, will give us the new album The Feast Of The Broken Heart, and we’ve already heard first single “Do You Feel The Same?,” as well as a couple of B-sides. The album’s only well-known guest vocalist is the former Czars frontman John Grant, whose 2013 solo album Pale Green Ghosts explored similar leftfield-dance-music textures. Grant sings on “I Try To Talk To You,” the anthemic feelings-jacked second single. And the song’s moodily lit black-and-white new video, from director David Wilson, captures two dudes in an acrobatic, sensual interpretive dance. It’s part of an ongoing biweekly music-video series from the online fashion retailer SSENSE.

Wye Oak "Glory" (Official Music Video)



The Baltimore duo Wye Oak released their synth-dominated new album Shriek a few days ago, and now they’ve made a video for the grandly fidgety single “Glory.” It’s a weird one. Michael Patrick O’Leary and Ashley North Compton directed the video, which is full of oblique imagery: Blank-faced young blonde women, ice cream cones, cigarettes, flowerpots, gold beads, tricky editing. Here’s what Compton has to say about it: “The video explores an internal and external power struggle and a fear of loss of control — through the lens of youth, anxiety, ease, and tension. The narrative follows youth-oriented themes, colors, styles and struggles with jarring and uncomfortable characters and movements. The editing and format allow for notions and items to be broken and reformed, given and taken back. Feelings of impulsivity and unsettledness are evoked.” I’m still not really sure what it’s about, but you can watch it below.