Welcome to FACT’s weekly video round-up.
As we note at the end of every year, music videos have never been better. But too often, music videos — along with documentaries, live sets and interview clips — get lost in the shuffle of news and new music.
With that in mind, FACT is doing what it does for mixes, mixtapes, vinyl and more: rounding up the internet’s best videos on a weekly basis. And to remove our bias, we won’t be including our own content — you’ll have to stay tuned to FACT TV for all your Against The Clock, FACT Freestyles and Confessions needs.
Read more: The 20 best music videos of 2015
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Cassius feat. Cat Power & Mike D
‘Action’
Dir: Yuri Ancarani
Cassius enter a magic photo booth and are transported to a cartoonish island paradise full of Planet of the Apes costumes, tiki gods, food play and science project volcanos that are Gondry-esque in their frivolity.
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Massive Attack & Azekel
‘Ritual Spirit’
Dir: Medium / Robert Del Naja
Massive Attack’s Ritual Spirit is proving to be quite the visual EP. After featuring John Hawkes and Rosamund Pike, Robert Del Naja and company enlist Kate Moss, who dances in the dark, swinging a light bulb for a strobing, zoetrope effect.
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DJ Vague
‘Freakout’
Dir: QUE
Tokyo animator QUE (not to be confused with the Atlanta rapper of the same name) draws from Japanese comics and cartoons in ‘Freakout’, using inkblot animation and a stripped-down palette to paint abstract images of industrial malaise befitting the hard-hitting track by Helix’s club tool-wielding alter ego.
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Rae Sremmurd
‘By Chance’
Dir: Max & Mike Will Made-It
Mike Will Made… a video, and a weird one, at that. ‘By Chance’ takes rap video tropes and turns them sideways as Rae Sremmurd have a dark-and-stormy beach party with smoke bombs, cash stack phones and the requisite beach babes.
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Bat For Lashes
‘In God’s House’
Dir: Natasha Khan & John De Menil
Natasha Khan returns, singing ‘In God’s House’ like an elegy at a desert grave as the sun sets. Compared to her previous videos, this one is less narrative but just as moving.
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Archibald Slim
‘One of Them Days’
Dir: JMP
With tequila his only friend, Archibald Slim nurses a hangover in a back-to-basics clip that evokes the day-in-the-life rap videos of the ’90s.
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XO feat. James Chatburn
‘Divine Disaster’
Dir: Simon Lane
Set in “an architectural dream of 1960s London,” ‘Divine Disaster’ utilizes a Steadicam that is always in motion, producing some dizzying Space Odyssey rotations.
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Slug Christ
‘3 Tab Shorty’
Dir: Bobby Lee Palmer
Slugger takes three tabs of acid and hangs out with friends (including Awful compatriot Alexandria). Thankfully, the video uses a kaleidoscopic lens flare to add a subtle, true-to-life psychedelia rather than going all “bad acid trip” (it’s been done).
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Classixx
‘Grecian Summer’
Dir: Steve Smith
Classixx’s ‘Grecian Summer’ is given a neon visualization that is perfectly suited to their equally neon brand of electro-house.
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Ezale
‘Day Ones’
Dir: StewyFilms
Rap upstart Ezale rides around East Oakland with his ‘Day Ones’ on some scraper bikes. It’s a simple concept, well-executed, and we’re always on the look out for new Ezale tracks.
