The 5 Best Videos Of The Week

straight2video

The 5 Best Videos Of The Week

straight2video

Thom Yorke rolled through to dominate the general conversation today, and his twitchy, hypnotic “A Brain In A Bottle” video really belongs on this list. But it came out on Friday, and this list only covers the seven days that ended yesterday. If Yorke was trying to game the system and crush this list, he fucked up and didn’t read the fine print. But if you feel like taking a break from figuring out whether “There Is No Ice (For My Drink)” is an actual song or just a series of immaculate bleeps, you can check out this week’s picks below.

5. JJ – “Dynasti” (Dir. Olivia Kastebring & Fabian Sigurd)

Lots of people do the neo-tribal people-dancing-around-a-bonfire thing in their videos. But nobody makes it look this genuinely alien and frightening and beautiful. If the painted-gold dead girl from Goldfinger became a voodoo zombie, she’d be Elin Kastlander in this video.

4. King Louie – “Live & Die In Chicago” (Dir. DGainzBeats)

“Live & Die In Chicago” is a love song to a dangerous place, a song about being unable to leave the place you’re from even though you know there’s a good chance it’ll kill you. On one level, this looks like any low-budget Chicago rap video. But on another, it’s an image of both the beauty and the danger of Louie’s hometown. There’s a reason why those DGainz videos — he did “I Don’t Like,” too — feel instantly iconic. The man knows what he’s doing.

3. Valentino Khan – “Make Some Noise” (Dir. Tim Hendrix)

If you don’t cackle with disbelieving glee the first time the alpaca shows up onscreen, the problem is not EDM cheesiness. The problem is you.

2. Iron Reagan – “Miserable Failure” (Dir. Whitey McConnaughy)

This one’s actually more than a week old, but I somehow missed it last week. If that makes you mad, feel free to suddenly run up on me at a lunch counter and scream in my face about it. Bring a flashmob moshpit with you. It’ll be awesome.

1. Ariel Pink – “Put Your Number In My Phone” (Dir. Grant Singer)

Looking back now, “Lynchian pick-up artist” has pretty much always been Ariel Pink’s whole style. It just took this video to make me realize.

more from Straight To Video