I MISS MY MTV

JACK WHITE – SIXTEEN SALTINES

This video features kids that appear to rule the world in what can only be called pure motherfucking anarchy. They boil bourbon in a coffee filter and use a gas mask to get high off of the fumes. They eat sandwiches off the ceiling. They have super powers. They get tattoos on their faces. They paint themselves all kinds of unusual colors. They break each others hands if they don’t play hopscotch correctly. Jack White is barely in the video but as the requisite adult, when he is on screen he’s bound and about to be set on fire. This video needs to be on television so that more people can enjoy its pure awesomeness. Oh, and the song is fucking badass. – JRN

Alex Clare – Too Close

I’ve been into this song for a couple of months now and it still doesn’t get old. Today was the first time I saw the video though. It started and I instantly felt a rip off of Adele’s Rolling in the Deep happening. Alex Clare was just sitting in a chair singing by himself while some ninja warrior started fighting. But then the video took a different turn. Instead of seeing cups of water vibrating and plates being shattered like in Rolling in the Deep we see that there are not one but TWO ninja warriors fighting with wooden sticks. They pretty much do this the entire video. With cuts to Alex Clare singing and standing around in a cold warehouse. In the end one ninja warrior wins and the other surrenders. The video isn’t great but the song is pretty rad. -RC

fun. – SOME NIGHTS

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Fun’s follow up track to the ferociously popular ‘We Are Young’ answers the question, can they make more than one epically catchy song. The answer is a resounding yes. I actually like Some Nights better than their first big track, albeit I haven’t heard it thirty thousand times yet. There’s something about layered vocals and pounding militaristic drums, and most of all those repeating “Woah Ohs” that all come together to create a sweet pop mess in my ear’s pants. And the fact that such a sweet sounding song is  heartbreak, sex, family, and general dissatisfaction with life while being played over Civil War violence is a tried and true video trick. The sweet song over violence, not specifically Civil War or necessarily the lyrical content. It’s  been used countless times, but fucking works, and the way this band does it fucking works even more. The spoken word part sucks, because inherently all spoken word parts suck in songs, except for “Love Is A Battlefield”. Wow, another war song! That should’ve been a Civil War themed video too, if only to keep those re-enactors employed. It’s a shame every time you see one of them in their wool uniforms holding a musket on a street corner-MG

SLEIGH BELLS – COMEBACK KID

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A chick with a gun! Jumping on a bed! FUCK YEAH! The “single” from their new album, (in that it’s the most popular purchase from the album on iTunes) Comeback Kid is a rockin’ song.  If you’re not familiar with Sleigh Bells it’s probably a pretty good introduction to the band’s bread and butter: hard hitting electronic-laden beats mixed with female vocals.  So in video format it will give you something to look at while you check out some cool music.  Also featured in the video is Alexis Krauss’s favorite leather jacket; I mean really, she wears that shit everywhere.

Grouplove – Tongue Tied

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This video is amazing in so many ways. It’s like Memento and The Hangover had an 80’s party movie baby, which makes the storyline that much more interesting than just a dude takes drugs and shit gets weird. Like being chased by masked thugs, either for making out with one of their girlfriends or changing shirts three times I can’t tell which disgusted them more.  Then cut to the band! Playing at the fictional crazy party! And they look exactly like what you’d expect from an LA hipster band who met at an artist commune, all asymmetrical clothes, messy hair and the obligatory pork pie hat. Of course the real reason I enjoy this song is probably the subliminal message that makes my brain equate it with happy good times courtesy of the almighty iPhone commercial. – AS

Mocean Worker – Shake Ya Boogie

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Sure, this song is a few years old, but the video is clearly going for a retro, Max Fleischer vibe, so the overall effect of watching it is…more old?  Previously owned?  It would take a writer to decide.  In any case, the song is the kind of thing you should listen to if you enjoy upbeat jazz, but don’t like people who like jazz.  (Seriously, they HATE this shit. My old hippie professor tried to claw my eyes out when I played this in a history of jazz class.)  I really like this guy’s work, despite having learned about it in a car commercial.  (Don’t look at me like that; we all know that one Alex Clare song is the love theme from an Internet Explorer commercial). -BW