Music Videos

The Swell Season's awesome album Strict Joy has been monopolizing my listening for the last few weeks, so of course I felt obligate to post their new video for the track In These Arms.  A nice simple black and white video that feels intimate, a nice pairing for the rawness of the track.

If this tickles your fancy you can find some other awesome Swell Season stuff online right now.  There is a nice 5 song set that the group played at Amoeba complete with video and all over here.  And as one might expect, they also have an incredibly awesome Daytrotter session from late last year available here.  Rock.

The Swell Season is mostly booked overseas for the next couple of months but they do have a show scheduled at the Hollywood Bowl on July 18th.   [via the scenestar]

Here is the new guest heavy music video for Vampire Weekend's Giving Up The Gun off their awesome album Contra . There's a lot of tennis being played and some guest spots from Wu Tang's RZA, Lil Jon, Joe Jonas, and Jake Gyllenhaal, who apparently gets really drunk.  Not sure they needed all the big names for the video because the song is so good, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt considering I got the youtube version of the video from a user named FanaticForJonasB.

As for the video frontman Ezra Koenig explains

"'Giving Up the Gun' just means turning your back on aggression and selfishness," Koenig explains of the song's concept. "The heroine of the video isn't an amazing tennis player, but she has heart. She stays calm despite the unfairness of it all."  [via spinner]

Oh, how cute, there is meaning and stuff.  Of course this isn't the first track from Contra to receive the video treatment as they also made that Cousins video. 

Here's the official video for the first single Written In Reverse from Spoon's new album Transference.  A gritty funky tune that Britt Daniel and company apparently thought was the perfect match for a boring black and white studio performance video.  Color me unimpressed, still like the song though.  [via pitchfork]

Here is the new video for the first single The High Road  from newly formed supergroup Broken Bells, featuring The Shins frontman James Mercer and super producer Danger Mouse.  The album is set to be released March 9th.

Here is the awesome new video by Animal Collective for the track Brothersport off their insanely great album Merriweather Post Pavillion.  I'm not sure what more these guys could do to make me love them more but a video that prominently features kids going crazy with paint mixed in with animated unicorn like monsters is a good start.  If you are feeling a bit nostalgic you can always revisit their awesomely weird video for In The Flowers.  Enjoy.

Here's the new video for Chromeo's dancetastic new song Night By Night.  The video, directed by Jérémie Rozan, is a nice showcase for the incredibly smooth dance moves of Dave 1, not to mention his fantastic wardrobe. 

Of course if you dig the track, and honestly, how could you not, you can download it for free at Green Label Sound, but you probably already did that a couple months ago. via

Recently The Avett Brothers announced that The American Budget Network would now be sponsoring their news updates.  Some people took this as another step in the band's selling-out.  Unfortunately those people have a pretty bad sense of humor and are pretty gullible as one viewing of any of The American Budget Network's videos made it pretty clear the band was having some fun.  With that comes the newest output from TAB (the network or brothers, whatever you prefer) is the second video off their awesome new album I and Love and You, this time for the track I and Love and You .

After about two minutes of clips the band joins our awesome salesman/host as he offers up the band's album and requests a performance.  The band politely and stoically obliges.  How awesome is Joe Kwon on the cowbell?

I am getting pretty excited for Vampire Weekend's sophomore album Contra , which is set to be released January 12th.  The band's first track off the album was the infectious laid back Horchata, and now comes the video for the album's first official single Cousins. 

The video features the band going back and forth on a track down an alley plastered with confetti and strings and flags and stuff.  Eventually the band starts wearing masks of each other on the back of their heads.  A quirky little video that fits the song quite well, an upbeat borderline punk number featuring Ezra Koenig pleading about his cousins and yours.  Good times. 

Personally I feel like Passion Pit's Manners is one of the funner albums of the year.  Here we have the video for the single Little Secrets.  Seems like the Earth is frozen, we go to outer space, stare at something cycling through all the windows media player visualization settings, then send some heat back to the Earth for some defrosting.  OK then, rock.

**Stupid Update: Apparently Passion Pit doesn't want to share their Little Secrets with the world, or more specifically Sony Music, so the video isn't actually embedded, you have to go to youtube to check it out.  I'll try and remedy the situation shortly. 

The first official video from Monsters of Folk's self-titled debut album was for The Right Place.  The band is back with a new video, this time for the track Say Please which starts off with the band in military garb only to take the stage to perform at a dance.  Good times. 

Also if you feel like getting in on the fun the band is partnering with youtube in a contest to make their next video, which will be for the song Dear God.  The winner gets $5000, a signed Gibson guitar, and Final Cut Studio.  Of course you also get to be the guy that made that Monsters of Folk video, rock.  For more details head over to the band's official site, which also has an extremely professional and well rehearsed video explaining the contest.