While the days of actually seeing music videos on TV are long gone, it’s nice to know that most artists haven’t abandoned the medium. Video sites like YouTube have breathed new life into music video production, and it seems like every new album usually guarantees a handful of new videos.
The actual quality of these music videos varies greatly, however. As discussed in my 2016 countdown, it’s hard to pin down exactly what makes a music video “good,” but it typically should be able to draw you in no matter how you feel about the song.
I watched over 85 music videos to make this list, and it’s unfortunate how many great bands/musicians really just phone it by using footage of the band playing or a stale closeup of the singer as a visual accompaniment to the music. With that in mind, the following indie artists really deserve recognition for putting so much effort into their videos this year:
10. We Are Scientists – Your Light Has Changed
While most of We Are Scientists’ music is heart-on-its-sleeve pop rock, the band otherwise avoids taking themselves seriously. Their live shows are full of top-notch improvised banter, and their music videos are almost always lighthearted and funny. “Your Light Has Changed” is the latest in this long line, and the best video from their sixth album MEGAPLEX. Here, the band’s singer/guitarist/silver fox Keith Murray is orchestrating something nefarious, as his bandmate Chris Cain receives a cassette by mail. Somehow, this tape connects to computers to start an entrancing video of Murray singing, which seems all well and good until Cain horrifyingly turns into Murray, complete with his t-shirt, sunglasses, and gray hair. This repeats with several other people, including a kid and a dog, until the entire planet literally becomes Murray. As summed up the band’s YouTube description for the video: “If there were a malicious epidemic that would nevertheless truly benefit humankind, this would be it.”
9. Jack White – Over and Over
True to the song’s title, this video shows Jack White playing guitar in a series of similar rooms. In each room, the camera pans to a couch on the left, a stairwell on the right, and then moves up and to the left to the next room, getting faster each time. If this sounds underwhelming, know that each room has the same layout but is otherwise very different. Some have different color schemes, like an all-blue room and a room where everything is white outlined in black, while others feature different occupants, such as kids in masks, soldiers, and people exercising. You’ll want to keep watching to see what’s in the next room as the camera starts moving at a frantic pace, and the video is one of the most visually interesting I’ve seen this year.
8. Franz Ferdinand – Feel the Love Go
There were a lot of weird indie music videos this year, as if multiple bands were suddenly inspired by Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! “Feel the Love Go” strikes a good balance between strange and entertaining, and is deliberately meant to look like something that would be on 1980s public access TV. Frontman Alex Kapranos plays a slick TV preacher, very much like the Black Keys video for “Fever,” only here we see devotees telling him their ills and Kapranos apparently fixing them by just shoving them to the ground. This is interspersed with some of the corniest effects imaginable, such as terrible greenscreen backgrounds, picture-in-picture pop-ups, and even clip art of a flying sax. At one point, Kapranos is dressed like Steve Jobs, although a version that dances like David Byrne. It’s delightfully inexplicable and low-budget throughout.
7. Arctic Monkeys – Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
If you haven’t listened to the latest Arctic Monkeys album, which shares its title with this song, you may find this video only so-so. Sure, it looks a little trippy and 70s-ish, with Alex Turner often evoking Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but beyond that the video is mostly just him wandering aimlessly around a casino. However, it’s a lot more rewarding if you’re familiar with the album, which revolves around a lunar resort called “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino,” hence the all the sci-fi elements and shots of the moon in the video. A marquee early in the video reads “The Martini Police: 2 Shows a Day 4 Nights a Week,” which is a lyric from the track “Star Treatment,” and Turner even picks up a batphone as a shout out to the track “Batphone.” There’s also some shared footage with the video for “Four Out of Five,” including the odd beeping noise towards the end. Yes, the video is mostly footage of casino, but it’s a lot better once you realize you’re seeing the moon-based casino described on the album.
6. Jack White – Corporation
Hey, a double dose of Jack White! Enjoy him here, since if you read the review of Boarding House Reach, you’ll know you won’t see him on the Indiecator’s top 10 albums of 2018. To his credit though, the video for “Corporation” is quite a feat, one that blurs the line between music video and short film. Basically, the video is a murder mystery, where a detective seeks to find out “who killed Jack White?” The suspects are a dancin’ man, an erratic cowboy, an assassin who’s definitely not Harley Quinn, and a whiz kid. Just like Twin Peaks, this murder mystery is pretty out there and not easily resolved, especially once everyone starts dancing and sits down for dinner with…Jack White. The video tells us that a corporation is “a group of people authorized to act as a single entity,” hinting that all these wacky characters are facets of White’s personality. However you spin it, the video deserves some recognition if not for the sheer effort that went into it.
5. Courtney Barnett – Nameless, Faceless
Several bands went with music videos that experimented with stylized artwork this year (shout out to “Severed” by the Decemberists and “Mayday” by the Go! Team), but “Nameless, Faceless” emerged as the best of the pack. Combining the cut-out collage style of Franz Ferdinand’s classic “Take Me Out” and Barbara Kruger’s artwork and color scheme, this video is both captivating and does a great job illustrating the lyrics. The song itself deals largely with Barnett’s feelings towards internet trolls, which explains the angry eyes looming over a laptop, and the frustrations that come with being a woman in general, with lines like “I hold my keys between my fingers” very clearly depicted in the video. There are also some clever visual choices, like Earth rotating around a hot dog for “you think the world revolves around you.”
4. Father John Misty – Mr. Tillman
This video is like a cross between “The Truman Show,” “Groundhog Day,” and an episode of the Twilight Zone. The song’s lyrics are addressed to Father John Misty (real name Josh Tillman) himself from the perspective of a hotel employee, and describe him having a mental breakdown. Well, the video depicts this perfectly, with Tillman checking into a nondescript hotel that has an ominous model of itself in the lobby. The action that follows includes a cab going nowhere, his doppelganger dropping in, and Tillman apparently stepping onto a set in a sound stage. You really get a good sense of Tillman losing it by the end of the video, and his acting is excellent throughout.
3. MGMT – Me and Michael
MGMT have never skimped on the music video front, although almost all of the videos are really bizarre and/or unsettling. “Me and Michael” is no exception, though it’s surprisingly full of lighter parts too. The video begins with MGMT conspiring to steal the song “Me and Michael” from the Filipino band True Faith – a real band outside the video, although MGMT are the song’s actual creators. MGMT’s unauthorized cover proves to be a real hit, and the band magically receives a chauffeur, Michael, played by Michael Buscemi (Steve Busccemi’s brother). However, just as the band reach their peak, complete with talk show appearances, shampoo deals, and exclusive club admissions, their pilfering is revealed, giving us the great chyron: “MGMT have stated that they didn’t know taking things on the internet was bad.” With their fortunes reversed, leaving nary a toilet paper roll nor full shampoo between them, the band decide to make amends with True Faith in the end. Being MGMT, the video is of course full of WTF moments from fleshy phone cases to Michael Buscemi removing his pea and carrot entrails, so minus points for making me watch that. Overall, the video far less disturbing than the bad acid trip video of “When You Die,” and more amusing than “Little Dark Age,” which would totally be on this list had it not come out last October.
2. LCD Soundsystem – Oh Baby
I usually don’t like to highlight downer music videos, but this one is just too great to omit. You may recall that LCD Soundsystem last released American Dream back in September 2017, an album a certain budding indie site called the top album of the year, but this video for “Oh Baby” only came out in September 2018. This video has some serious star power behind it: it was directed by Rian Johnson (who last did Star Wars: The Last Jedi) and stars Sissy Spacek (of Carrie fame) and David Strathairn (of Good Night, and Good Luck). That might sound like overkill or even cheating for a music video, but this is another one that blurs the line between music video and short film. It spins a tale of love and teleportation, but things take a tragic turn towards the end. Kudos to all involved for cramming so much plot and emotion into fewer than six minutes.
1. Chromeo – Must’ve Been (feat. DRAM)
Alright, let’s end this list on a less serious note. Chromeo consistently make really entertaining videos, which lately have highlighted the duo’s sense of humor. The band’s lyrics tend to be full of kitschy come-ons, so a somewhat campy video meant to show that Dave and P have always been bad boys fits them well. However, by far the best part of this video is just when it seems to settle, it escalates further. I don’t want to give too much away, although I will say that DRAM has aged surprisingly well since 1998.
