Death Grips have just shared a new video for Jenny Death track “The Powers That B,”
aka the title track of the whole double album affair. The clip entirely
consists of frenetically sped-up footage of Death Grips cleaning an
impressive amount of beanbag Styrofoam from the floor, but somehow it
kinda works.
Nick Cave’s The Sick Bag Song
began as a series of poetic musings scribbled on airplane barf bags
during the Bad Seeds 2014 tour of North America. Now it’s a full-fledged book,
with a new limited edition version just published. In honor of that,
filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard — the team behind the great
Nick Cave pseudo-documentary 20,000 Days On Earth — have made a
series of five short films featuring Cave reading from a different
city’s chapter in the book. The spooky “Los Angeles” video shows a
weirdly refracted Cave looking (as always) like a dapper vampire as he
talks over an unsettling ambient score.
Last summer, Seattle band Craft Spells, the project of Justin Paul Vallesteros, released Nausea,
a record founded on simple guitar/synth lines and easy listening. This
summer, director and editor Shaun Libman made a music video for “Twirl,”
one of the album’s highlights. The video follows a couple through their
daily activities in a mundane way, reminiscent of a scene from Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, but with ’70s flairs in the vein of Almost Famous
as well. Movies aside, this video will resonate with anyone who’s been
inspired by an indie song to throw out all their stuff and start over.
So, every angsty millennial ever.
Next month, Titus Andronicus come roaring back with The Most Lamentable Tragedy, the massive and overwhelming 93-minute rock opera that they’ve been working on forever. First single “Dimed Out”
was exciting as hell, and now they’re letting the world hear the truly
badass follow-up “Fatal Flaw.” The song rips in many of the same ways
that “Dimed Out” does, but it’s got this amazing lively chorus, as well,
with some serious Stones/Replacements shimmy to it. That piano! Those
strings! So good! The video, shot and edited by Jeremy Aquilino,
consists entirely of footage from the band’s rousing and life-affirming
live shows.
Sleater-Kinney took the Later… With Jools Holland stage last week and played three tracks off their latest release No Cities To Love: the title track, “Gimme Love,” and “Price Tag.” A week later, footage of the full performance is finally online.
After a full U.S. and Europe tour, Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein,
and Janet Weiss have finely-polished their live show, but Tucker threw
me for a loop when she collapsed on the ground during her guttural
performance of “Gimme Love.” Watch the trio work through three intricate
songs without taking a breath.
Tink and UK producer Tazer collaborated on the single “Wet Dollar,”
and today, it gets a dance-driven video. Despite the artists’ respective
homebases (Tink is from Chicago, Tazer from the UK), the video is based
in New York: wandering through streets, on rooftops, and into the
subways. You can watch the MC dance and spit to Tazer’s lounging beats.
The song exudes a cool vibe, and when you see Tink in action, you can
understand why Timbaland is hailing her as the next Aaliyah. She has
attitude, the ability, and the confidence to use it.
The video for “Stonemilker,” the monumental opening track from Björk’s harrowing breakup opus Vulnicura, is a 360-degree virtual reality video by Andrew Thomas Huang. It debuted at museum exhibits in London and NYC
earlier this year, and now it’s online for the whole world to see.
Because Björk is such a captivating performer, the effect of seeing her
emote in front of gorgeous landscapes is well worth a look from many
angles. Use the cursor in the upper left-hand corner to navigate the
footage below.
It’s been a great year for puppeteers trying to break through in the music video world. Shamir’s “Call It Off” video was an adept nod to Sesame Street not easily followed by Tame Impala’s “Cause I’m A Man” piece, and now, JEFF The Brotherhood have released a video for the Wasted On The Dream
track “In My Mouth.” Created, filmed, and edited by Halle Ballard, the
piece shows puppet versions of the Nashville brothers performing in
front of changing background. After seeing JEFF perform at our SXSW Austin Invasion showcase, I’d say the impressions are pretty spot-on.
“BYOYOLO” is the ecstatic closing track to Terror Pigeon’s magical and uplifting Live It Up Before You Die It Up!,
the best record from last year that you maybe probably haven’t heard
yet. It’s a heart-racing track built around a mantra that encourages you
to “go and fuck the shit out of your dreams,” and the video is equally
as great. It was put together by Dominic Rabalais (Little Ruckus) and Emily Kempft (Supermagical) — who both also grace the artwork for the album — and it’s a hyperactive, striking series of images: they
play piano in bondage gear, stare intimidatingly into the camera, make a
face mask out of food. Most of all, they channel the inspiring, frantic
energy of the song in a really great way.
Cate Le Bon is a singer-songwriter from Wales, and Tim Presley is a
psychedelic rocker from California who records under the name White
Fence. Together, they’ve formed a new duo called Drinks, and their album
Hermits On Holiday is coming out later this summer. Together, the two of them have directed a video for the album’s title track,
which sounds like Stereolab if Stereolab were an incredibly low-tech
postpunk band that formed immediately after hearing the Raincoats for
the first time. The clip, shot in fuzzy VHS style, goes for maximum
adorable, with Presley’s parents dancing in the background and a few
shots of seals sunning themselves on a dock. It’s easy to like.
Sasha Siem is one of the youngest people — let alone women — to win
the prestigious British Composer Award. She did so in 2010, composing
for prestigious institutions like the London Symphony Orchestra and the
London Philharmonic Orchestra. Siem contains multitudes; aside from her
composition background, she also studied music and poetry at Cambridge
and Harvard, and has ventured into the world of avant-pop with the
release of her debut album Most Of The Boys in the UK. Now,
that album will be released in the US too, at the end of June. In
anticipation of that, she’s shared the video for “See-Through,” a
collection of intricate light collages focused mainly on her face. We
premiered another of her songs, “So Polite,”
back in January as a precursor to the album’s official release
overseas. “See-Through” explores similar tensions. The London-based pop
auteur seems intent on unraveling society’s unwritten rules down to
single threads, snipping them in half as orchestral chaos swells all
around. She throws her vocal lines around the song with the same drama
of Fiona Apple, Jenny Hval, or Bjork, contorting her voice like a
funhouse mirror. That effect lends itself well here, since the David
Altweger & Mira Loew-directed visuals shift in the same way.
If you’ve watched either of these last two videos from Canadian emo
synth-pop group Stars, it’s very clear that the band are working through
thoughts about their legacy. Such is the case for many indie pop bands
who achieve a stable and devoted fan base but reach something of a
plateau after several years. Stars’ last album No One Is Lost
was their eighth. It was well-received, but by now it’s clear they will
never be an arena act. Does that mean they should quit? “Trap Door”
focused on the ever moving thrust toward radio and creating new
“content” and this video, ostensibly for “No One Is Lost,”
kicks off with a candid conversation between Torquil Campbell and
Christopher Seligman. Will their band last forever? Should it? Are they
foolish for pursuing purist, indie desires when they could sell out in
favor of big tent pop? What is the meaning of life? It’s a poignant,
intimate look into a veteran indie band’s modern reality. As always, the
song itself is pristine indie rock; a mooning meditative on loss and
acceptance.
The South Korean boy band BigBang are a pop-cultural force all around
Asia, and if you’ve watched their absolutely fucking insane megabudget
videos for tracks like “Fantastic Baby,” you will have some idea why. The group has a new album called M.A.D.E. coming out in September, and the meticulously planned rollout includes
both a North American arena tour and a new, insanely epic video at the
beginning of every month. The new one is for “Bang Bang Bang,” and it is
a beautiful, absurd riot of glitter and pink hair and hydraulic
low-riders and flamethrowers and tricked-out motorcycles and grenade
launchers and studded leather and androgynous models on leashes and
anti-aircraft guns and cowboy hats and Buckingham Palace guard hats and
assault vehicles being driven like chariots. I love it. I love it so
much.
When I wrote about “Miniskirt,” the first single off of Braids’ Deep In The Iris,
I claimed that it was a feminist anthem, an aggressive bone-chilling
takedown of misogyny told through a personal story. Raphaelle Standell’s
lyrics lack subtlety, and that’s what makes them so powerful. “In my
position I’m the slut/ I’m the bitch/ I’m the whore/ The one that you
hate.” Based solely on Standell’s performance and brazen lyricism, I
stand by the claim that “Miniskirt” might be the most important and
accessible pop song I’ve heard this year, and the accompanying video by
director Kevan Funk is a nuanced take on its violent imagery. Standell
embodies both the caged woman reminiscent of Rapunzel, blatantly trapped
in her ivory tower, and the so-called liberated — or as Standell says
in the song “unfairly choked” — one dancing in a garden. But this garden
is a greenhouse, suggesting that its prisoner is just as oppressed as
her dark twin, contained and made complacent.
Hey, remember the Italian dance duo Crookers’ remix of Kid Cudi’s “Day ‘N’ Nite”? That
was a banger. Crookers are still around and still making international
dance hits, though now it’s one guy instead of two. And said guy
recently linked up with Chicago R&B king Jeremih for the new single
“I Just Can’t.” In its video, from director Joe Zohar,
a self-destructive cop sees doppelgängers of himself everywhere he
goes. It’s a strange video, but for a clip that features rough sex and
multiple shootings, it’s surprisingly safe for work.
The latest single in Fucked Up’s long-running, expansive, experimental
Zodiac project is “Year Of The Hare,” a wide-ranging 20-minute epic.
We’ve posted the awesomely psychedelic and sludgy B-side “California Cold,”
itself a pretty huge bite at eight minutes. But the main event is “Year
Of The Hare” itself, and you can now hear it in the form of an
appropriately strange interactive video project. Trevor Blumas directed
the song’s video, which shows a day in the life of a young
corporate-drone type who occasionally hallucinates the presence of
people in creepy-ass rabbit costumes. But the video exists only in a
series of 25 loops, and you have to use your keyboard to “escape” them. I
can’t get it to work, but maybe you can? Give it a try here; the song is worth it.
William Tyler’s 2013 album, Impossible Truth,
was one of the first things I ever wrote about at Stereogum, so I’m
always going to have a special place for him in this not-so-sentimental
heart of mine. Tyler’s music inspires a sense of longing for a simpler
lifestyle, and if I listen to it on certain days, it makes New York seem
like a hellhole. Merge Records will reissue Tyler’s 2008 record, Deseret Canyon
(which he originally released under the name Paper Hats), and to
accompany the release, his sister Elise created a video for the song
“The Sleeping Prophet.” Tyler told NPR the following about the video:
When William asked me to direct a video for him, I knew
that I wanted to make a video only I, his sister, could make. For me,
that meant an intimate look into his world. Every location and scene is
true to his day-to-day life in Nashville. An important aspect for me was
driving — on tour or off, he loves to drive. He has driven alone across
the country multiple times on tour. At home, he often relaxes with a
cruise around town. We shot the entire video in one day, with my crew
including Dustin Lane as director of photography. It was a rewarding
experience and speaks very true to my brother and the beautiful
simplicity of his life off the road.
In the video, Tyler wakes up, cooks breakfast, works out with a
personal trainer, gets a manicure (he has super long nails so that he’s
able to do this fucking masterful fingerpicking), and drives around
town. Nashville’s suburbs are on full-display throughout, with an
abundance of sad strip malls and $1.25 liters of Coke for sale at gas
stations for only 99 cents (!!!), but there’s a comfort in this local
loneliness though that would remind anyone of home. The opening shot is
very American Beauty; you’ll see why.
