ROUND-UP: Hottest music videos of the week
From dark themes of capital punishment and solitude to warped Halloween car-ousel trips and female empowerment – it’s all here. Five recently released music videos you’re going to want to watch.
Lorde – Yellow Flicker Beat
“I’m a princess cut from marble”, sings New Zealand born singer-songwriter Lorde, the princess of dream-pop and indie-tronica, in her latest release ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’. The song is part of the soundtrack to the much anticipated ‘Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1’ which will be released worldwide later this week. The song is the first offering from a soundtrack curated by Lorde. The video displays Lorde, with her signature long fingernails and wild hair, twisting and tossing towards the musical climax. Like any good work, this video explores a diversity of elements before revert-ing to the initial tone, which is indeed “smoother than a storm”.
Metronomy – The Upsetter
Images of Robinson Crusoe immediately come to mind in the latest video release from Metronomy, the electronic group founded as a bedroom project by Joseph Mount in his parents’ Devon house. The ‘Upsetter’ video, which was directed by Daren Rabinovitch, however puts a new spin on the old story as a primitive woman creates herself a lover from her surroundings. The song, a “campfire sing-along”, is a touching tribute to nature and companionship and the video appropriately mellow and beautifully shot.
Melanie Martinez – Carousel
Breaking through the ranks in the 2012 American The Voice, Martinez released her first original single earlier this year after signing with Atlantic Records. Her creepy-cute sound comes through even stronger in her second single, ‘Carousel’. The single, which is featured in this season’s American Horror Story: Freak Show trailer, has been captured in a deserted Long Island carnival video. The candy-coloured video, sufficiently twisted and sinister, is freakishly good and promises great things from the young queen of the bittersweet.
FKA Twigs – Video Girl
Twigs, who has been called “the UK's best example to date of ethereal, twisted R&B” is an artist in her own right. Experimental of sounds and emotions, the London-based, former backup dancer with the whispery, moody vocals opens herself up to controver-sy in her latest video. The video mixes the erotic with the politics of capital punish-ment in a cocktail of disturbing images and dark undertones, curiously offset by the extreme delicacy of her voice. Twigs releases her unsettling video just in time for the Mercury Music Prize Ceremony which takes place on 18 November. “All eyes on you now”, Twigs, “what (or how) you gonna do?”
Azealia Banks – Chasing Time
All black-and-white but for one devilish red eye, Azealia Banks’ new video is just about as cool as the Harlem-raised singer herself. Well-known for the profanity in much of her other music, Banks is on her best behaviour, yet manages a “banging tune” with just the right amount of empowered diva. ‘Chasing Time’ is a catchy, ready hit with a booming chorus. The video, futuristically simply as it is, matches the quick-footed lyrics and the electro-pop synthesis perfectly.
