ALL YOUR WORDS — JIL

Four reasons why this music video slaps:

One, it’s got representation. We’ve got some good women loving women stuff going on here, which is important and beautiful and really exciting. Women are great, women loving women is even greater.

Two, it’s by my favorite music video director/producer/editor Anton Tammi. His work is incredible, he made the Uh Huh music video below, and most recently directed The Weeknd’s short film After Hours (it’s also a really good video — although the teaser for it is cooler than the real thing). If this apocalypse thing keeps happening, I think I’m gonna cold email the man and ask to help edit his videos. The official game plan is to become a white-water river rafting guide and then in my spare time with the wee bit of wi-fi I can find in the Wyoming mountains I’ll slave away on Final Cut Pro (or whatever he uses — magic?), learning from the master the ways of music and movies and art.

Three, the music video is a goddamn art-piece. Tammi is the god of freeze frames. See: 3:09 — where a kiss transforms into a spark from a cigarette, transforms into the light of a motorcycle in the smoothest, butteriest way. His other good freeze frames: a window into a coffee cup at 4:52 and a crystal ball into a motorcycle helmet at 2:44. Tammi also makes use of cool effects without going over the top (see: the shadow at 3:36, the heart beats at 4:18). And the color grading, ugh, the color grading. If his color grading doesn’t scream lesbian rendezvous in a high-tech low-life post-apocalyptic world … what does?

Finally, it’s got a nice, ambiguous story, the type of story music videos need. I’m not giving away any spoilers, but here are some hints: Wig, no wig? Red. Drugs.

SIAMÉS - Mr. FEAR

The animation style, the inking and the color palette (following the laws of cool and warm tones and dark and light), the character design, just the overall aesthetic. The way the storytelling plays with panels—see 1:43 onwards, or 2:42 to 3:22—is so brilliant. The music itself is incidental, honestly. It’s just the soundtrack for a lovely, lovely work of animation.

Monsune - OUTTA MY MIND

We mentioned this in our post about MOUNTAIN by Monsune before—but it’s worth saying again. This video is gorgeous—it’s all filmed in one long tracking shot that just doesn’t quit, and the color tone, and the humor—I’m in love. I mean, I was already in love with Monsune. The moment I saw the EP cover for Tradition my heart was taken away, and then I actually listened to the EP and I felt like my heart was collapsing into itself all at once. And then I saw the VIDEO for OUTTA MY MIND—what can’t this man do?

Kendrick Lamar — Cartoons & Cereal

This isn’t an official music video, it isn’t even an official song. It’s just a bunch of clips of cartoons, pieced together in a really good way, that this random kid on the internet made for one of Kendrick Lamar’s most underrated works.

A$AP Rocky - Kids Turned Out Fine

This is the music video of all music videos, folks. It’s also probably the music video that got us into music videos, so thank you for that A$AP.

The first half of the video is a series of still shots of kids and teens and families, some sunny and nostalgic, some bordering on insane, all on the same bright backdrop. I think it portrays the complex relationship a lot of us have with our childhood memories, where both the messed up and the beautiful intertwine. A$AP throws a few loops in there that elevate the music video to more than just this aesthetic slideshow, though. In the coolest switch up on this doc, the still frame of A$AP at 2:56 transforms into a — wait, we won’t spoil it for you. Just watch the video and get educated on what a real music looks like.

BROCKHAMPTON — This is Dominic Fike

(a music video for 3 Nights by Dominic Fike)

This isn’t the official music video for Dominic Fike’s 3 Nights, but it should be. 3 Nights a basic banger in the best sense of the word. No special effects, or fancy lyrics, or crazy drops, it’s just a good song — easy to love. The best word I could use to describe this video is self-aware (and I adore it for that). It starts with an interview of Dominic Fike, then we follow along with The Boys™ (i.e BROCKHAMPTON) as they work through a video for the song. Throughout the video, someone behind the camera yells some sort of instruction, like “Sing here!”, or “You’re good, keep going!”, and these little bits made the video so much more genuine. Typically, when you see these nostalgia-inducing music videos on grainy film, they’re a bit contrived, they’re made to seem like memories, but we know they’re not the memories themselves. That’s why, I like the way BROCKHAMPTON and Fike approached this vid, where the memory is the making of the music video itself. Watching This is Dominic Fike felt like we were back on the set of Birdsong (the greatest movie ever made) fucking around with shots and scenes and our minds to make a little something for the people. It’s a good feeling.

NIIGHT - Good Old Days

(a music video for Myth by Beach House)

Justin Kaminuma (NIIGHT on YouTube) is the love of my life, and I’ve never even met him and I never will. I love all the videos he makes so much, the aesthetic and the music and the way it’s just a feeling. Like!! The only reason I was ever into making videos / film at all was because I watched this video of his.

And this short, in particular—who else can so perfectly capture the nostalgia of teenage summertime? Like, I watch this video, and I feel a longing for an adolescence I never even experienced. I remember summers on Cape Cod, cruising through redwood forests on an endless drive to nowhere with my friends, longboarding, snapbacks, hot dogs on the boardwalk, having nothing to do and not enough time all at once. In reality, I probably spent (most) of my teenage years mostly doing homework, worrying about college apps, and like, interning over the summers. But Good Old Days takes me to those moments in time where I belonged to another reality, instead, you know? I can suddenly recall that I did experience Summer Teenagerdom™—we all did.

This video gives a meaning to Myth by Beach House that wouldn’t exist otherwise. It’s pure feeling, reminiscence and distance from the past, and I love it so much.

Raveena - Mama

Wanna make me cry? Play this song! Everytime I hear Raveena croon “What kind of tears did you cry on your wedding day?” I lose it. This song is the song that grounds me, that reminds me of how much my mother gave for me to be here, for me to be happy and healthy and well-fed and safe. So yeah, I tear up— fight me.

To add on: Yeah facts. Like, the experience of being the first generation to grow up in America and having immigrant parents isn’t without it’s ups and downs but like holy shit our parents did so fucking much for us to be here that it’s insane. Watching this video makes me think of all the old on-real-film ’90s photos of my mom and dad on the East Coast. How my parents moved here and went to grad school and lived in New York and left their entire families behind. All so I could just like vibe in America and grow up not really worrying about anything except my own teen angst, you know? There’s a fuck ton to be grateful for.

The video perfectly interlaces clear cut scenes of different mothers or mother-figures and old 80s/90s home-video recordings of Raveena’s mother’s wedding (it looks like it came straight out of my own parents’ wedding). The flickering ’90s Huji-esque filters on the clips, Raveena and her grandmother holding each other in the sunlight of an apartment kitchen, Raveena with her head curled in her mother’s lap. The 1993 VHS type-beat showing bringing a newborn home for the first time. It’s entertaining, it’s nostalgia inducing, it’s sentimental, it’s tear-jerking, it’s perfect.

Also, Raveena is so! Insanely! Beautiful!

Somewhere Else - Uh Huh

See above for description of Anton Tammi. It’s a good video. I love cowboys and cowboys of color, and dancing, and good editing, and cool effects. This baby gives it all.

Frank Ocean - Nikes

Trippy, impossibly, impossibly gorgeous, a show of excess, and yet with undeniable moments of tenderness. The images in this video are hard to forget—a girl silhouetted by golden light and falling rain on a white horse, the solemn faces of Frank Ocean and A$AP Rocky, standing apart from the chaos of a color-corrected nightclub, a man being set on fire, a fall into a hot tub and a body in a water tank—a talking, winking chihuahua. This video is so, so beautiful. Like an insane trip and a fever dream—Frank Ocean is a genius. That’s all that really needs to be said.