The Daily Swarm

Courtney Smith turns you on to the five best music videos out this week.

Department of Eagles “No One Does It”
Obviously any music video Patrick Daughters touches is better than your music video. His videos premiere at MoMA and Spike Jonez comes. You’re lucky if anyone watches yours on YouTube. Then when you add in the first video foray of visual artists Marcel Dzama (although he did produce album art for Beck, They Might Be Giants, Eisley and more so it was sort of inevitable he’d end up behind some lovely video someday) you’ve got a genuine work of art. Doesn’t this video make you think of a communist influenced take on Salvador Dali’s art direction of the dream scenes in Hitchcock’s Spellbound?

No One Does It Like You – Department Of Eagles

The Horrors “Sea Within A Sea”
It’s hard to make any music video interesting for 7+ minutes. So what The Horrors have done here is recreate an Echo & the Bunnymen video, with running colors and light effects straight out of 1986. The thing is that the overall effect of it is very soothing, especially if you grew up watching 120 Minutes. It’s all so familiar that the video becomes a warm blanket to wrap up in – certainly not what anyone expected from The Horrors second album.

Tiny Masters of Tomorrow “Skeletons”
Teenage Sonic Youth FTW!

Crystal Antlers “Andrew”
This is the way a video with live performance footage and shots out of the tour van is meant to be done. Honestly people, all you have to do to make that shit interesting is vary your shots, insert a lot of close-ups and double the amount of cuts so there’s a new image flashing every few seconds and have good lighting. It turns a boring ass live video into something worth watching.

Low Vs. Diamond “Don’t Forget Sister”
Unexpected surprises are nice. Like the effects in this video. It seems like it’s going to be one thing and then they hit you with some impressive little real world effects that make it much more clever than the first minute or so indicate it will be. Now if only I could redress this band in different outfits.