Maybe YACHT wouldn't be that sad if the complete and total annihilation of the human race happened tomorrow. The video for their song "Beam Me Up," off their recent album Shangri-La, finds the band playing around with the upsides of doomsday in a laser tag arena. Think of a future where cyber-soldiers fight each other in the smouldering metallic ruins of society, except with children shooting fake lasers.

"Beam Me Up" begins like the opening to an "invaders from outer space" sci-fi and ends with a yelp of exasperation. Singer Claire Evans, sounding like a new-wave Siouxsie Sioux, sings, "High above the clouds somewhere / The cold of space spreads thin / We endeavor to look out / They are looking in."

The sentiment in the chorus — that one day the narrator will watch her planet burn — sounds unfortunate. By the last stanza, however, it's obvious that the first impression is faulty. This narrator can't wait for the whole crummy Earth to blow up: "There are nights that I burn out / I drink deep from my cup / I look all around me / and think, 'Oh god, beam me up!'"

A song so enthusiastic about the downfall of mankind needs an equally dystopic video. Thankfully, when the band was traveling through Portland, Oregon earlier this year they met up with Into The Woods, a local culture/music/video blog, and performed as part of the blog's Far From Home video series. This series takes artists and gets them to perform a song in an unusual space — tour buses, arcades, and under bridges to name a few. Director Hannah Gregg and the Into the Woods team paired the retro sci-fi of "Beam Me Up" with the blacklit world of laser tag. The band gets into the manic energy of all the kids running around, playing along with the gigantic fake battle raging around them.

For YACHT's singer, Claire Evans, the combination of the "Beam Me Up" and laser tag was perfect:

Our song, "Beam Me Up," is about being so exasperated with the human race that rapture via alien abduction begins to sound appealing, so it was a perfect concordance to shoot our episode of Into the Woods at the heart of a fictional intergalactic war. That is the premise of laser tag, right?

In an email, director Hannah Gregg talked about the challenge of filming in the middle of a fake cybernetic war:

A laser tag arena is the epitome of challenging for a live performance shoot, and I knew it would take a band willing to commit to the strangeness of it all. We had a laser tag arena in mind for a shoot for a few months, but hadn't nailed down an artist that felt right for the shoot. It wasn't until two days before the band was to play a homecoming show in town that everything clicked — YACHT was the perfect fit. I emailed [YACHT member Jona Bechtolt] and 48 hours later we were hauling YACHT's gear into Laserport in Beaverton, OR. I knew this would be a challenging location, both for shooting and performance. Playing there meant setting up in the dark to perform in a weirdly situated blacklight room with little kids running around, techno dance remixes bumping between takes and two crews of cameras. It was sort of weird and stressful, but that was the point.

I was most excited about shooting YACHT in a laser tag arena because I wanted to see how they confront being in this strange and challenging location, and document the performance that arises out of that extra stress and unfamiliar territory. While the location is sort of funny in nature, to make this successful it needed a band that was going to take seriously actually how awesome of a location it was and be totally committed to the concept, and YACHT did just that. As an added bonus, it turns out Laserport is located right near where Claire grew up, so while it was far from the band's new home, there was a nostalgia for the area and the party room and the vests and the video games that made Laserport home for the afternoon.

Yacht's album Shangri-La is out now.

Take a humongous group of excitable jokers who have too much free time on their hands, mix in enough instruments to satisfy an entire marching band variety, toss a few gigantic pom poms and enormously-loud/elaborate outfits their way and you'll get Mucca Pazza. The Chicago-based band is a 30-piece (yes, 30 trombonists, trumpeters, guitarists, cheerleaders, and more) community of "circus punks" that makes music that sounds like the results of a rowdy weekend at band camp.

Mucca Pazza's new song, "Boss Taurus," feels like a musical debate: the trumpets make a declaration; there's a response from the guitars; and the lone tuba tries to get a word in edgewise. The pieces constantly break apart and then get back to working together to get you bouncing in your chair.

The video for "Boss Taurus" has a remarkably simple concept — the members of the band perform and goof off on a tiny stage for three minutes. Its simplicity makes it easy to be swept up in the wave of exuberance and flashy colors packed into those minutes. In that short time, we can easily recognize the personalities of the performers — the single slightly-harried tuba player compared to the funky sax machines compared to the cocky guitar gods. I could easily see this video as an excerpt of a much longer film where the band has to put on a show to save their community rec center from an evil oil baron. Everyone's slightly awkward, a bit askew and having the time of their lives on the stage.

Director Jim Newberry described to us in an email how he wanted to focus on all the boisterous personalities in the band:

For this video I wanted to keep things simple. The musicians of Mucca Pazza are incredibly vibrant, energetic, and anarchic, and I didn't want to get in their way by using a lot of self-conscious film-making tricks. So we decided on a simple but lovely set with one camera locked down in a wide shot with occasional roving close-ups. I had worked with the band before and seen them perform many times, so I knew I could pretty much let them do their expressive, hilarious, inspiring performance the way they wanted to and it would be fabulous.

One of the things I love about the band is how there are so many of them — over 30 — yet each band member has his or her own distinctive personality; each wearing their own non-uniform uniform. They're definitely a cohesive unit, but each individual's personality shines through. That's what gave me the idea of having shots of them one at a time, either running or walking through the frame, or just standing there.

Mucca Pazza members Meghan Strell and Sharon Lanza talked about planning and designing the video with Newberry:

Our dear friend Jim shot black and white portraits of everyone in the band a few years ago. When we asked him to shoot a video, he proposed making a video portrait. We started out talking about individual portraits and developed the idea to capture the interaction of each section of the band, or section portraits. We shot the whole song all the way through a couple times with each of the seven sections, to provide Jim with a lot of material to sort through in his editing process. We wanted to capture and contrast individual interaction on the section level, and convey the personality of the trombone section vs. the drum section, for example.

We intentionally made the set too small for the whole band, riffing off our experience at many rock clubs where our 30 piece band performs on a 12'x15' stage ... or less. Jim wanted the set to be "beautiful" in a way and inappropriate for a marching band. The quick turn around and collaborative nature of the process are representative of the Chicago arts community that Mucca Pazza is so lucky to be a part of. Chicago is a city of generous and multi-talented artists that get things done.

The band's new album, Safety Fifth, will be out June 12, 2012.

Justin Jones is a local D.C. talent. I've seen him a number of times often as an opening act. I've enjoyed his music but it wasn't until this new record that I went "WOW!" Jones has just finished a powerfully magnificent Americana album called Fading Light. This song, "Miracles" opens with over a minute of hypnotic rock that — if it wasn't played so well and recorded so well — would fit comfortably on a Velvet Underground record. But the rest of the song is good strong radio-friendly rock 'n' roll and I'm curious to see a D.C. native make it to airwaves.

The video for "Miracles" is one part handmade science fiction and one part familial drama. A shady-looking scientist sells supposed miracles on TV. A family clashes over whether they should turn to this less-than-credible fellow to try to help their daughter (his miracle device looks like it's 95 percent wires, so the husband has a right to be skeptical). What seems to be shameless hucksterism turns out to be the real deal and video ends with a moment of quiet calm. After all the bouncing around and the fun, the quick transition to stillness brings out the aftereffect of the miracle and makes it resonate emotionally.

In an email, Jones described his thoughts on writing "Miracles":

"Miracles" was written about that feeling I get when I think about how vast the universe is and how crushing that can feel. We're all running around thinking we have "important" things to do and we're just these tiny creatures on this tiny rock. And we're destroying that rock, and we don't really seem to care.

The video's concept was thought up by director George Burroughs and producer Matt Chenet. Basically I'm selling snake oil, want some?

Chenet wrote in about trying to connect the visuals to the feeling of "Miracles":

We've been fans of Justin's music since we were first introduced a few years back, and we've worked together on a handful of projects since. For the "Miracles" video, we wanted to produce something that complemented the high energy and production value of the song, but also captured the conflicting emotion of the lyric. Much of Justin's music seems to walk the line somewhere between heartache and despair on the one end, and hope and resolution on the other. We felt it was important for the video to reflect that conflict, both in the overall aesthetic and the story itself.

Justin responded to the 'Salesman' idea early on, and from that point, George came up with the story of our conflicted family in search of a Miracle. After reading the treatment, Justin suggested asking his friends, the Hobens, to play our family, and fortunately for us — they agreed. We were all surprised with how naturally Justin, Kylie and Ruby Hoben took to their roles and played them with the understated style of experienced actors. Once we walked through the first few shots on set with our full cast — we knew we had something cool.

We built our sets in an empty row house rented by the 930 club, so that we could create the feel we wanted from the ground up and control every aspect of the shoot.

Justin Jones' new album, Fading Light, is out now.

Enlarge Alysse Gafkjen

Dr. John (right) with Black Keys singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach, who produced Locked Down. In April, the pair played songs from the album at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Alysse Gafkjen

Dr. John (right) with Black Keys singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach, who produced Locked Down. In April, the pair played songs from the album at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Dr. John's latest album, Locked Down, was produced by Dan Auerbach, the guitarist and singer for The Black Keys. As Auerbach told NPR earlier this year, he wanted to coax something autobiographical from the revered New Orleans singer, who has built his career on inhabiting a very specific persona.

"I wanted to surround him with younger guys. To test him a bit," Auerbach said. "I also wanted him to talk from the Mac Rebennack perspective, lyrically. I didn't want him to talk from the Dr. John perspective."

Now, we have the one-and-only music video from the album, a behind-the-scenes look at how Rebennack becomes Dr. John over three and a half minutes of horn-laden rock that are simultaneously relaxed and tightly wound.

Directed by Reid Long, the video for "Revolution" was shot over three nights in April during a residency at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It features footage of Rebennack and his band, including Auerbach, rehearsing onstage in an empty theater at BAM and hanging out backstage, before an audience begins to fill the auditorium's seats. Then, about halfway through the song, the music drops out as Dr. John, decked out in a blue suit, feathered straw hat, gator-tooth necklace and a long braid, steps into the spotlight and growls, "Let's all just pray on it right now."

The video is the result of a collaboration that began on a different stage, at last year's Bonnaroo. Auerbach invited Dr. John to participate in a jam at the festival, then went into the studio to record Locked Down in Nashville over the fall.

"We cut some tracks, then I whipped up the words, and that's how we got started recording the song," Dr. John wrote in an email. "Dan brought in The McCrary Sisters to do backup and made some shifts to make it work with them. When we got back together in Brooklyn last month for BAM, it all fell right back into place."

I can pinpoint the exact moment that I decided I loved "Hey Tovarich," the new music video from Russia's Mumiy Troll. About halfway through the video, there's a quick clip of singer Ilya Lagutenko bewigged and looking like a very mellow Bob Ross. On his canvas aren't happy little trees, but gigantic explosions.

You might have heard of Mumiy Troll when it represented Russia in the 2002, Eurovision song contest, but it's been making waves in Russia for almost thirty years. The band's songs have a dark swagger — a smirking glam rock style that can be both creepy and funny at the same. "Hey Tovarish," the single off the band's first-ever English language album, starts off as a song about "best looking ladies" and quickly turns into something stranger. The horns and throbbing bass kick in and Laguntenko sings lyrics like "Beat the leach / Suck pain till the last drop."

The video for "Hey Tovarish" has the same surreal/sinister twist. A kid, identified as Mumiy Troll's number one fan, flips through TV channels to watch all of his favorite Mumiy Troll programming. Laguntenko appears as a bumbling '70s variety show frontman, an out of control anime Power Rangers-style rocker and an unnerving Blues Clues-esque Steve lookalike. That would make for a pretty fun concept by itself, but what's supposed to be the real world — the kid watching TV — becomes more dream-like as the video goes on. By the time the boy is placed onto a scooter, doing donuts to a cheering crowd, the video has evolved from a sequence of homages to a bizarre, saxophone-filled nightmare.

In an email, Mumiy Troll frontman Ilya Lagutenko talked to us about the meaning of "Hey Tovarish":

This is the first video from our debut English album Vladivostok. Whatever the song is about (it's actually about our guitarist who's always fussing over his girlfriends, but hush hush ... that's a secret) we wanted it to sound like an introduction to a band that's willing to become your best friend. Reaching an audience that knows very little Russian, is unfamiliar with the our band and usually only thinks of Russia in terms of the Soviet Empire and Cold War is not easy.

We're kind of like the kid in the video, dreaming of becoming international rock stars. Like him, we believe pursuing your dream is a reward in and of itself. As a bonus, when you watch the video and listen the song you learn at least ONE word in Russian. "Tovarish" means Comrade and Amigo at the same time. And you don't even have to see a single Russian spy, mafioso or pretty blond in the video! Amazing, yes?

Director S.F. Porcaro adds:

From the start, this was a great project to be involved in. Ilya's only real requirement was to make it fun and unique. Other than that, he was pretty much open to anything. Game on.

The trickiest part was trying to come up with something humorous that was also appropriate for the song, since it has a very epic and dramatic feel. The idea of a kid flipping through the channels looking for cartoons, only to continually find the band, seemed like a good place to start. Then came the scooter and the fans, which helped enhance the dream-like feel to the whole thing.

I was fortunate that [the whole band] were all really nice guys. When working with rock stars, especially ones as successful as Mumiy Troll, you never know what you're going to get. But they were a joy, and really fun to work with.

It's been nearly two years since soldier Bradley Manning was arrested under suspicion of obtaining and distributing classified military documents to WikiLeaks. The 24-year old Oklahoma native now faces 22 different charges, including aiding the enemy — a charge that, if he is found guilty, would result in possible life imprisonment.

In December of 2011, near the beginning of Manning's first hearing, folk singer Cass McCombs premiered a new song to protest the trial. McCombs' lyrics mostly ignore the alleged leak; instead he looks at the events leading up to Manning's emotional breakdown and violent outburst in Baghdad. McCombs describes Manning struggling to fit in with the other soldiers, singing "It's hard to imaging why bullies dig / but Bradley understood it came with the gig." McCombs' version of Manning is an outsider who never found a permanent place to fit in. The song ends with McCombs speaking directly to Manning, saying "Bradley, know you have friends, though you're locked in there."

McCombs worked with director Bradley Beesley for the song's video, filmed in Manning's hometown. Shot in color that evokes film from the 1970s, the video follows twin boys as they explore the town on Independence Day. On the surface the video feels simply immersed in American symbols: fireworks, a painting of soldiers, an American flag fluttering in the breeze. Set to McCombs' words about bullying and the struggle to fit to a certain masculine role however, the images take on new meaning. The inherent violence of the fake gun and the firecrackers (a few look like tanks) becomes easier to notice. The final shot of the twins running and shooting off exploding fireworks in the river becomes a strange blend of the joy of kids having fun and the high tension that comes from being in a war zone.

Director Bradley Beesley described in an email working in Cresent, Oklahoma for the video:

Cass approached me about making a video for the Bradley Manning song while I was in Oklahoma, my home state, working on my TV series, 'Mudcats' — a show about men who catch giant catfish by hand. I have spent a lot of time in rural towns in Oklahoma working on my films and I felt it was a perfect time and place for this video.

Cass and I spoke about a visual theme and thought that filming in Bradley Manning's home town of Crescent, OK would create a strong context for his song. I wanted to create small town American imagery to reflect the environment I imagine Bradley Manning came from. Fortunately, I was able to shoot on Independence Day which allowed us to capture some iconic and patriotic visuals that create a mood that is somehow complimentary to the song.

The twin boys in the video are Will and Jack, my nephews, and together we make short films each summer. It's a way for us to bond and make art. This video was a way for me to speak to them about the Bradley Manning story while keeping it in the context of real life, in his town rather than a heavy news story.

I enjoy opportunities to collaborate on projects like this that give you as a filmmaker a sense of purpose and it doesn't hurt when you get to be the 'cool uncle' at the same time.

In an email Cass McCombs offered a few of the sources which inspired him to write "Bradley Manning":

If you are interested in the subject and person of Bradley Manning, these items might be of some use. This is the article I based the song on. I found it on a train while in London. Around that same time, a friend sent me a postcard that read, 'Took some flowers to Booth's grave recently. Thought of you.' I saw Angelina Llongueras read this poem at a protest in San Francisco and was moved to tears. Another friend of mine sent to me this blog written by his teacher. And of course, www.bradleymanning.org.

Packed into a tiny basement in Washington, D.C. called the Rocketship, it was one of those shows where if a pit got started, everyone got involved. Shirts came off, heads narrowly avoided exposed light bulbs, and the underage room was caffeine-jacked on Arizona tallboys from the corner store.

Based on Max Moore's video for "My Body is a Well," it seems like that might be business as usual for Code Orange Kids. Moore's take on the familiar, immediate-feeling live-performance clip captures Code Orange Kids' energy and turns it into a dark, stylized take on the band's totally unhinged and tangibly aggressive hardcore

In an email, Moore explained that the video was shot "in one pass, completely live with three cameras, at a real show":

The video was shot in Louisville, Kentucky at a house show called The Chestnut House. Realizing the power and emphasis of Code Orange Kid's live performance, I knew that capturing the video live would be essential.

Drummer and one of three screamers Jami Morgan is "really stoked" about the video

[Max Moore] did an awesome job of conveying the mood/imagery that we feel goes along with our band and this split. We are proud of the song and its counterpart and even more proud of Full of Hell's killer side of the 7".

Live-performance music videos are a relatively cost-efficient way to promote a release (in this case, a split seven-inch record with Full of Hell): Set up some cameras at a show, let the band do its thing, edit it down. But there are very few that don't feel like poorly stitched-together YouTube clips or artier versions of a live Van Halen video from the '80s. Moore spices things up by splicing in anthropomorphic Evil Dead-like tree branches between live shots. But for the most part, "My Body is a Well" is edited to convey the bloodthirsty headrush Code Orange Kids inspires

Watching Code Orange Kids in that basement is like what I imagine D.C. hardcore looked like in the '80s, with Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye hanging from the rafters. That doesn't quite hit the mark — the main things that connect the two bands are age (the members of COK recently graduated from high school) and energy. A more suitable comparison might be the dark, maniacal hardcore of Deadguy slowed down to a mosh-able mash. But even then, the band's tapes and seven-inches hint at something more chaotic, sinister, and ultimately heavier, and I'm looking forward to what fresh hell Code Orange Kids conjure on its full-length for hardcore heavies Deathwish Inc. this year.

Code Orange Kids' split EP with Full of Hell is available from Top Shelf Records.

Kat Edmonson has been on our radar for a while now. In 2009, after the election of President Barack Obama, we put out a call out to our listeners to try and capture the pulse of the culture. She turned in an ambitious tune and video called "Be the Change." That same year, she had the temerity to tackle a version of George Gershwin's "Summertime," and we put that on Second Stage the moment we heard it. This week she's on All Things Considered, talking about her new music, which isn't so far from someone like Cole Porter.

Here's a bonus: we've got a brand new video from Kat Edmonson, perhaps more short film than music video. Edmonson, who collaborated on the concept with director Ethan Segal and co-director Jason Jones, wrote in to tell us about the making of the film:

"I love this very dark film playing over a seemingly contradictory and extremely beautiful love song. Makes it all the more grabbing. The thing is, I intended for this song to sound dark. I recorded "I Don't Know" from the stand point of someone that loves someone else so deeply that they seriously don't know how they would live without this person. I approached it as a person mourning their lover even before they are gone. The words lent themselves to that. And the character in this film basically eternalizes her lover by doing away with him. She can't live with him but she can't live without him. That's on a whole 'nother level! I may have just made it very hard for myself to get a date in the future."

Co-director Jason Jones says the shoot ran into some complications:

"For this video, we knew that we needed a night time burial scene. The thought of digging a desolate grave at dusk is scary enough, we ran into an extra element of fear when scouting the location. As we drove toward the top of the mountain we were staying on, we noticed an ideal-looking forest for the scene — what we did not notice were the no trespassing signs posted around us. Just before we pulled over to dig our grave, we were forced off the road by an enormous truck. A very large and very upset man approached us. We decided to play dumb, insisted that we were simply sight seeing around the mountain. Thankfully, he let us go.

"Luckily, he saw us during daylight and not at 2:30 in the morning with Kat throwing dirt on a body. I don't want to think about what of [would have happened] then.

"Besides our scary run-in with the locals, the video just felt like it wanted to make itself. Kat was so amazing and the location gave us so many interesting shots that it made our job super easy."

Kat Edmonson's new album, Way Down Low, is out now.

The first thing we learn about the unnamed subject of Fool's Gold's new song, "The Dive," is he/she can't stop moving forward. "You're in love with the dive / the form of a running stride / it's your only design," Fool's Gold's singer Luke Top proclaims. "Where home is your last desire." On top of a bright, driving guitar and drum combo that sounds straight out of classic Afropop, the band describes a person whose constant push forward has turned into a sad obsession — a dangerous "fire" that's continually growing.

For the song's video, the band collaborated with director Tim Nakashi — who also directed Fanfarlo's "Shiny Things" — to make a fun new piece with a '70s retro feel. In the video, a young scientist wanders around a empty beach and gives in to the temptation of taking a plunge into the ocean. What could be a simple, straightforward story is livened up with Nakashi's interjection of explosive bursts of color and light. Like the song, however, the video has an undercurrent of sadness hidden inside the flashes and explosions — the scientist is alone, taking pictures and doing small sampling experiments in a solitary mission. It's only after she takes "the dive" that she realizes what's she missed.

In an email, Nakashi described how he interpreted "The Dive":

The inspiration for the video came from conversations with Fool's Gold about how sometimes in order to do what you love, you have to say goodbye to everyone and everything you love — at least for a long while — when you're traveling on a tour or obsessively diving into the next album. So that was our launching off point for the video, which is about a lone scientist who experiences some kind of cross-sensory synesthesia when she obsessively uses her scientific equipment to take in the nature around her. She sees and hears the vibrations from the rocks, leaves and water around her. But then when she finally submerges herself in the ocean, everyone she left behind comes flooding back in a dreamy underwater reunion.

Singer Luke Top said the band enjoyed Nakashi's sensory take on their song:

"The Dive" is about obsession, and we thought making a video that depicts an altered reality makes total sense thematically. To me, this video represents the coalescing of internal and external worlds in a way that seems both beautiful and questionable. Not to mention totally psychedelic! We definitely encouraged [Nakashi] to experiment and manipulate any and as many images as possible. And hopefully touch upon the two major moods of the song: joy and melancholy. It was also not extremely difficult to hang out near the ocean for a couple days.

Fool's Gold's new album, Leave No Trace, is out now.

It's easy to emotionally connect with Glen Hansard's music. His work in The Swell Season and The Frames cut to the emotional core of issues like heartbreak and loss while still keeping the feelings universal.

"Philander," Hansard's first single from his upcoming debut solo album, Rhythm and Repose, depicts the end results of a broken relationship. In the course of four minutes, Hansard bounces through the stages of grief. He denies that his love ever left, singing, "She never said goodbye / Only see you later," then quickly flips to anger, spitting out, "Come on you little actor." He eventually accepts what's happened, and hints that he's to blame: "I'm always gonna stay/ here with my philander."

For the song's video, Hansard collaborated with director Conor Masterson, who's photographed Hansard and the Swell Season previously. The video leaves everything up to the viewer's interpretation: Hansard wanders around a small London flat arranging the objects in a room that's seen better days. There are shots of outdated machines. It feels like we have missed all the action and are only seeing the emotional aftermath.

In an email, Masterson said that he wanted to keep the video simple and leave the meaning up to people's imaginations:

One room, one light and no fancy camera moves. Because Glen is such a natural performer we tried to make the set as real as possible so we propped with a mixture of found objects man-made and natural and built it in the corner of a yard of an old house in London that has a rich music hall history.

The shoot itself was very creative and we chiseled away at the shot list often shooting only one take before moving on and discarding anything that felt too fussy. My overall desire was to let the music and the lack of action allow the imagination to breathe."

Hansard's Rhythm and Repose will be out June 19th.

"He is gone / movin' on / wants to be alone," Megan Reilly sings in "Throw It Out," a breakup song packed with melancholy twang. It starts spare and builds to a heartrending climax.

It's not Reilly's narrator who's suffering; "Throw It Out" is an advice song to a friend navigating a difficult separation. "You've been running around / trying to make sense of it / trying to make everybody else proud," Reilly sings. "I wanna believe / you're not gonna chase / after someone / who doesn't want you."

In an email, Reilly said that "Throw It Out" was one of the first songs she wrote for her third record, The Well:

"It's a really personal, emotional song and one of my favorites of anything I've written. It deals with the breakup of two friends of mine. I was watching my girlfriend fall apart. It's frustrating watching someone you love make mistakes, and sometimes you want to fix it when it's impossible. More than anything, this is a love letter to her to say that she deserves better, that she can't let life pass her by while she waits for someone who doesn't want her anymore.

For the song's video, Reilly worked with Antoine Wagner, who made the video for Phoenix's "Lisztomania" and had worked with Reilly's husband, the actor Daniel London (more music-related coincidence: London acted alongside Will Oldham in Kelly Reichardt's film Old Joy). In the video, shots of Reilly singing directly to the camera alternate with Reilly and London, dressed in identical suits, making exaggerated faces that seem at odds with the lyric's emotionally forthright content.

Reilly says Wagner's idea for that split came from an unexpected source:

He listened to the song for around a week, then sent us some stills of the old French comedian, Fernandel, from an interview in which, rather than writing out or speaking answers, Fernandel responded to the questions just by making various funny faces. Antoine, whose native language is French, said, "I have the concept for the video. I can't really explain it to you, but trust me. And do you think you could get your hands on some matching outfits?" Antoine showed up at our house in New Jersey one afternoon, with his infectiously life-loving energy, as always — knowing exactly what he wanted to shoot, what he wanted from our performances, clueing us into his ideas as needed, talking about a fractured relationship where Daniel's character has this specific world that he wants my character to inhabit with him and how my character tries her best to make it work, but ultimately must break free. It turned out to be a perfect distillation of the song's complexities and a metaphor for the lives that inspired me to write it.

Megan Reilly's The Well comes out April 24.

The latest video from English electronic artist Chris Clark (who records as Clark) is one of the most arresting short films I've seen this year. The production, from the directing duo known as The Vikings, is more movie than music (the song, "Black Stone," takes up only two of the video's five-and-a-half minutes). But the song is so beautiful and the visuals so captivating, it still feels like the right balance of sight and sound.

"Black Stone" is from Clark's gorgeous new album, Iradelphic, just out this week on Warp Records. It's his sixth full-length and most organic release to date, with more acoustic instrumentation than he normally uses. "Black Stone" is a solo piano piece. The simple but beautiful pulsing chords are set against a strange and unsettling backdrop.

"I've been wanting to work with (directors) Xander and Bjoern (The Vikings) for a while now," says Clark. "They totally nailed the look, narrative and mood, with the help of a little bit of English snow and some wonderfully disgusting insects. I can't really think of anything else like this film, which is obviously a really good sign."

Xander, half of the The Vikings duo, calls "Black Stone" an "exceptionally beautiful piece of minimalism that, appropriately enough, like a black hole, has the power to pull you in and spit you out in a far-away, parallel universe. In our story, Clark's music draws us into the dark, nether existence of a man who has lived in isolation for many years. He lives in utter darkness and is only kept company by his worms, insects and piano. We wonder what Jung would have said about this psychological fruit salad."

Enlarge Courtesy of the artist

Courtesy of the artist

Exitmusic, the husband-wife duo of Devon Church and Aleksa Palladino, makes epic music — and I don't use that word lightly. Though it feels like "epic" gets tossed around to describe anything up to the sandwich you just ate, there are certain things that you just have to describe as such. Exitmusic's new single, "Passage," is one. The mix of Palladino's hauntingly beautiful vocals and the massive waves of sound keep on rising to new climaxes. In an email, the band described "Passage" as "losing yourself to the moment even though you know it cannot last." While Church and Palladino were referring to the song's lyrics, this concept is true for the listener's connection to the song. By the time the drums kick in and Palladino's voice swells to a near-breaking point, you're fully drawn in, experiencing a burst of emotional energy.

The "Passage" video finds Exitmusic working with director Will Joines (whom they also worked with on the video for their song "The Hours"). It feels like the climax to a longer film. We're dropped into this somber-toned world and shown intriguing snippets of what might be occult rituals, the band playing in a smoke-filled space, and Palladino in a bathtub. There's sort of a horror movie vibe but one that's particularly intense and sinister. When the video ends suddenly you want more of this world, more of the strange story that you don't fully understand.

In an email, Joines talked about making sure the video matched the song's power:

Early on, [the band and I] talked about the song's feeling of being drawn to something inevitable, like a moth to a flame. I tried to capture that in the video with images as dynamic and cinematic as the song itself.

Exitmusic's debut LP, Passage, will be out on May 22nd from Secretly Canadian records.

It's pretty amazing what a person can do with smoke, a few lights and some good editing. Mauro Remiddi, a.k.a. Porcelain Raft, uses these elements to create the perfect visuals for his new single, "Drifting In and Out." In the song, Remiddi's airy vocals swirl around the dark, humming synths and thumping drum machine beats. There's a feeling of movement, but it never goes to any certain place. It instead just spirals continually inward — eventually breaking apart and turning into a single tone.

In the video for "Drifting In and Out," Remiddi creates what I imagine it's like inside the head of a person just about to start dreaming. The video is surreal, but never dives into nightmare territory. Remiddi twists and turns in a mysterious black void, his face often covered either by strong shadows or smoke — there's a lot of smoke. Large, translucent hands wriggle around him and a piercing light sporadically flashes. Slowly, an image emerges behind Remiddi until he passes though a mysterious door, revealing (though it remains slightly hazy) the source of the light.

Remiddi talked about the idea behind the video for "Drifting In and Out" in an email:

"I've always been intrigued by smoke machines so I decided to use one for this video. I was inspired by the idea of a lighthouse, a little sparkle that can guide travelers out of the dark."

Porcelain Raft's Strange Weekend is out now from Secretly Canadian. The label will also be releasing a 7" with "Drifting In and Out" b/w "Chain" on June 26th.

The title track of the new album by Plants and Animals, "The End of That" feels like a rambling session between two people who just can't stop talking. The song is full of emotional confessions ("I tried cocaine just to know what it could do/ I had to try it again just to give it a second chance") and slightly naive proclamations ("We're hoping to be friends and do cool stuff and be equal"). These vocal meanderings are all laid over a The Band-style jam session — the musical equivalent of the singer's babblings.

Be advised, this video contains profanity.

In an email, the band described their feeling behind "The End of That":

This is a late-night confessional, a catch up with an old friend over a beer. We went for the straight line in this song, musically and lyrically, as much as we ever have. It isn't an end so much as a road stop, really. Basic, naked, celebrating the journey.

A collaboration between the band and director/actor Joe Cobden, the video for "The End of That" evokes the cheesy early-'70s variety shows, particularlyThe Englebert Humperdinck Show. There's the requisite gross orange, blue and yellow color combinations and amazingly long sideburns. My favorite part is when an audience member appears out of nowhere and then quickly vanishes again. The video's lead singer is a little sleazier than the hosts of the day, however — he insinuates improper things to his back-up singers and sings lyrics that would not pass standards and practices.

Cobden says he worked with Plants and Animals to create the idea for "The End of That":

So often the music takes a back seat to the director's concept. I wanted to focus on the song, make it the star. Plants and Animals liked this ridiculous clip of Englebert Humperdinck, singing "Quando, Quando, Quando" on The Englebert Humperdinck Show. They suggested we shoot that kind of thing. Made sense to me and I was glad that they came up with it. ... I like to imagine a really tacky "Plants and Animals" TV show. It's absurd. And in the cacophony of self-promotion and music videos coming from everywhere, everyone with their band and record to push, it's important to have a good laugh at it all, not take it so seriously. Plants and Animals want to make good music for a living. They have to make videos to promote their records. They're not cheesy careerists, they're excellent musicians. So we wanted to tackle that in a fun way. Plus we figured we could do those amazing sets for, like, twenty bucks.

Plants and Animals' new album The End of That is out now on Secret City Records.