VIDEO | Watch the week’s best new music videos (November 18, 2012)

November 18, 2012 by Alan Pedder in Blog

Björk Headed up by LA-based filmmaker Andrew Thomas Huang, ‘Mutual Core’ is hands-down the Icelander’s best video since the magical ‘Wanderlust‘. ”I like using practical effects and puppetry as much as I can,” says Huang of his process. “If it’s too digital, it feels dead.”

Aimee Mann Directed by Ben Berman, this clip for ‘Soon Enough’ from Mann’s latest album Charmer [review] turns a humorous/critical eye to the manipulation that goes on behind the cameras on reality TV shows. Tim Heidecker – who co-wrote the track – stars alongside actress Emily Procter and Aimee’s husband Michael Penn.

Beach House Directed by Johan Renck, this video for ‘Wild’ is as close as Beach House have come to being gritty. The clip’s muted colour palette and simmering emotions portray a hard-hitting bleakness that makes this easily the band’s most impressive and coherent promo to date.

Purity Ring Director AG Rojas is racking up quite the portfolio of music videos. This magical new clip for ‘Lofticries’, taken from Megan James and Corin Roddick’s excellent debut LP Shrines, follows “a series of characters [who] encounter surreal moments” – a purposefully vague description that leaves the contents wide open to interpretation.

Anna Meredith ’Never Wonder’ is taken from the Black Prince Fury EP, Anna Meredith’s debut release for Moshi Moshi records, and is notable not only for the Scottish composer’s bizarre interpolation of Jennifer Rush’s ‘The Power Of Love’ but also for this eye-boggling, kaleidoscopic split-screen video, directed by Upstart Thunder.

Laura Mvula We first head Birmingham resident Laura Mvula’s twinkling, hymnal soul cut ’She’ back in September, but this Damian Weilers video gives the song a whole new dimension of beauty. Filmed in and around Montagu, a town in the South African province of Western Cape, it’s a simple, heartwarming treatment that’s as inspiring as Mvula’s clear talent.

Iberia This clip for ‘An Ending (Ascent)’ takes the celestial music of Swedish duo Maja Mathé Milner and Alexander Palmestål deep below the surface with images of French freediver Guillaume Néry (a former world record holder in what’s been termed ‘underwater base jumping’) swimming without breathing apparatus down into a murky hole on the sea floor and resurfacing, gasping for air. Shot by Julie Gautier.

Alice Russell Released today, ‘Heartbreaker’ is the lead single from Alice Russell’s new album To Dust (TruThoughts; February 2013), which follows this year’s well-received Look Around The Corner, a collaboration with Quantic and the Combo Bárbaro. “It is a broken-hearted love song about the end of a relationship”, says Alice of the single. “It’s about that time when you’re just emotionally exhausted, you know you just have to let it go, you are resigned to it all being over.” Actor Harry Shearer (‘Spinal Tap’, ‘The Simpsons’), a long-time fan of Alice’s music, stars in the accompanying video.

Icona Pop Swedish duo Icona Pop make being Swedish duo Icona Pop look like a lot of fun in this new Fredrik Etoall-directed clip for ‘We Got The World’. Hard-partying, hair-whipping, bum-baring, ill-advised-leatherwear-in-the-desert kind of fun that serves the lyrics well (“We’re just living life and we never stop / we got the world”).

Katy B London 2012 gold medal-winning boxer Nicola Adams stars in the video for this collaboration between Katy B and multitalented producer and BBC Radio 1 DJ Mosca, a retooling of his 2011 club hit instrumental ‘Bax’ that’s squarely aimed at mainstream chart success.

Want more new videos? Follow the links below.

Eternal Summers – ‘I Love You‘
Nite Jewel – ‘Weak For Me‘
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Dawn McCarthy – ‘Christmas Eve Can Kill You‘ (Everly Brothers cover)
Metric – ‘Breathing Underwater‘
First Aid Kit – ‘The Lion’s Roar‘ (live at Lollapalooza)

And, of course, the new one from Norwegian trio Highasakite that we premiered on Wednesday.