5 videos you might have missed this week
Beirut – ‘The Rip Tide’
Houmam Abdallah’s clip for the eponymous single of Beirut’s latest record, The Rip Tide, is a glorious celebration of light and colour worth sinking into. With sun and sea pitched perfectly against the aching swell of music, this non-narrative video skips over being boring, and achieves something altogether a bit mesmerising.
Twin Shadow – ‘Five Seconds’
Something a little more sinister and chaotic comes in the form of the latest Twin Shadow video, shot for the single ‘Five Seconds’. Taken from Twin Shadow’s, or George Lewis Jr.‘s, second album, due out this year on 4AD, the track provides an insistent backdrop to unadulterated, violent japes.
Sigur Rós – ‘Fjögur píanó’
Initially while watching this latest instalment of the Icelandic stars’ mystery film experiment , directed by Alma Har’el , you could be forgiven for thinking this was simply a run-of-the-mill, standard naked ballet dancing music video. Things are about to get a lot stranger, though; in fact, it’s unlikely that you’ve seen anything else as odd as this butterfly-sniffing, body-painting, Shia LeBouef-starring video in a long time, and certainly not this week. It’s worth watching until the end, if not for the weird and wild visuals, then at least for the continuous shock of what happens next.
The Shins – ‘No Way Down’
At the opposite end of the weirdness spectrum is this new video for The Shins’ track ‘No Way Down’, taken from LP Port of Morrow. Nothing here is calculated or contrived to achieve the “woah” factor; rather, this clip just shows the band being themselves, playing their song live and giving it a new jangly, bass-driven vibe. A friendly, enjoyable watch.
2 Chainz ft. Drake – ‘No Lie’
This mish-mash of monochrome visuals for 2 Chainz’s and Drake’s ‘No Lie’ comes from Canadian music video director Director X, and is as subtle as a brick. Between lie detectors, gyrating women and indoor sunglasses there’s not much here that has any real significance, but the cheeky, cheesy performance is all the more fun for it. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth taking a couple of minutes to see what the fuss is about.
