The 5 Best Videos Of The Week

David Bowie - "The Next Day" video

The 5 Best Videos Of The Week

David Bowie - "The Next Day" video

Have you watched the 15-minute Red Bull Music Academy documentary about DFA? Or the hour-long Savages Ministry Of Sound show? No? You should do those things. As ever, there was plenty of amazing music-related video on the internet this past week, and not all of it took the form of actual music videos. Some of it, however, did, and we’ve got five very good music videos below.

5. The National – “Sea Of Love” (Dir. Sophia Peer)

The little kid is clearly the best kid. And fuck you guys, he’s not buttoning that top button if he doesn’t want to. The video turns out to be a tribute to this amazing and ridiculous thing, but I’d almost prefer to believe that the kid was just wandering past the video shoot (dressed like that) when he decided to butt in and steal the entire thing by force.

4. Team Spirit – “MRDR It’s Ok” (NSFW-ish) (Dir. HannesJohannes)

In the realm of fantastical, violent animated rock videos, I’ll take this one over the also-great Queens Of The Stone Age “I Appear Missing” clip, if only because it’s got a complete narrative and a sense of fun to it. Also, bonus points for continuing a saga begun in a previous video — one that, it appears, will wrap up in yet another one.

3. The Lonely Island – “Spring Break Anthem” (Dir. The Lonely Island & Scott Aukerman)

That Edward Norton cameo? Simply masterful. The announcement of Wack Wednesdays probably means we’ll get one Lonely Island video in this countdown every week until The Wack Album drops.

2. Pusha T – “Numbers On The Boards” (Dir. So Me)

A rare example of a rap video that makes its presence known with patience and atmosphere, all minimal foreboding restraint. So Me generally tends toward the brilliantly hyperactive, but here he sticks with dark hallways and weathered stone, and it’s absolutely the right choice.

1. David Bowie – “The Next Day” (NSFW) (Dir. Floria Sigismondi)

What if David Bowie was actually dead? What if he recorded The Next Day and planned every stunt around its release before his death, keeping that death secret, doing all this as a message beyond the grave? Would you doubt that he’d be capable of it? For whatever reason, that goofy non-theory has been bouncing around in my head since he album came out, and the only way I know for sure that it’s not true is that he definitely filmed this video in the last month or two. In any case, this video, with its Catholic troll-baiting and its use of a decent chunk of the Dark Knight Rises cast, would seem to feed that speculation. Those final shots are just beautiful, and the entire rest of the video is a scandalous blast. Gary Oldman can throw a punch, goddam.

more from Straight To Video