It’s video roundup time! Once again, Howl And Echoes are coming in hot with the freshest, most eyeball stimulating music videos to be dropped by the artists you love and some of the artists you don’t know you love yet, of this week. We do all the dirty work and herd them all into one convenient web-based location for you to enjoy every Friday so that you don’t have to. Have yourself a good old gander at the latest offerings from:
Bleached – Keep On Keepin’ On
All girl all kickass punk rock trio Bleached have given a release date for their new LP Welcome The Worms, now due for landing on April the 1st of this year. They’ve also given us the first taste of that upcoming record this week, releasing a brand new single and accompanying video for Keep On Keepin’ On.
It’s a song that, like the rest of that record, for which the writing and recording was fuelled by some incredibly personal troubles lived through by two of the sisters in the band (Jennifer and Jessie Calvin). The end result is some emotional yet relentless punk rock that might as well have been born on the Sunset Strip in the latter half of the 80s. It’s a very welcome throwback though when it’s done this well.
The video, directed by Lana Kim, pays a subtle tribute to the girls’ home of Los Angeles, warm and sunny shots of the suburbs mingled with a lot of super cool slow motion running. The wait for more isn’t as long as it seems, Welcome The Worms is out April 1st via Inertia.
Tiggs Da Author – Run (ft. Lady Leshurr)
If you’re looking for a summer track bursting at the britches with positive energy then look no further than London-via-Tanzania MC Tiggs Da Author and his latest offering Run. The song is already well-known having been debuted on the institutional Later With Jools last year as well as for its inclusion on the ’16 edition of perennial five star video game franchise FIFA.
Drawing heavily from the East African jazz he grew up listening to, Tiggs Da Author creates a beautifully simple yet indelibly infectious sound on Run, his smoky flow contrasting nicely with the spitfire rhymes of guest MC Lady Leshurr.
The video is a simple lyric one set to a loop of Tiggs dancing in the late afternoon sunshine, but if you can have this in your ears and your face doesn’t crack a big old shit-eating grin then you may have problems.
Tindersticks – Were We Once Lovers?
When we last heard from Nottingham rockers Tindersticks it was catching the video for their last single for their upcoming album The Waiting Room. It’s an ambitious project as both an album and a collaborative film project with each track being given its own short film accompaniment.
Now only a fortnight away and dropping on January 22, Tindersticks have released the single and film for new track Were We Once Lovers? Borne from the desire of frontman Stuart Staples to craft a song centred around a slap bass. It’s done to near perfection hear, the slap bass giving the song a beautiful rhythm that juxtaposes with the minimalistic piano and backbeat and the cavernous vocals of Staples to create a dusky and haunting song that burns slow and crashes wonderfully into an urgent chorus.
The accompanying video was directed by Pierre Vinour and is a time lapse shot of a car driving through the night before ending up in the ocean, a series of shots that complements the song beautifully.
The Waiting Room is out January 22nd via Inertia.
Tom Thum and EMRSN – Hit The Road Jack
Here’s something a bit different we’re throwing in just because it’s so fantastic. World-renowned beatboxer Tom Thum, in a collaboration with EMSRN (of vocal duties with Future Soul) have joined forces for a truly unique take on a Ray Charles classic.
I’m not usually a huge fan of beatboxing but this is out of this world good. From the beat to the scratches to the brass, Tom Thum creates it all with his mind-bending (probably part-cyborg) vocal cords and lays it all under the soulful vocals from EMRSN, which stack up admirably against the song’s original owner.
They’ve opted for laidback and cool with the delivery, which suits it perfectly. It’s a truly futuristic and joyous interpretation of a soul classic by two amazingly talented young men. The video is a simple one, just the two artists laying it down on the microphones in stark black and white, but it’s probably a good thing the visuals are this basic, your mind should be blown enough by what you’re hearing.
Inspired And The Sleep – Die Slow
San Diego dream pop band Inspired And The Sleep have enlisted the help of an Australian director, one Robert Crispe, for their new video that looks like a whole bunch of the most painstakingly hard work imaginable. It accompanies their new single Die Slow, a track from their most recent EP Eyelid Kid.
Featuring pan pipes, a mellowed out rhythm section and some equally laidback vocals from frontman Max Greenhalgh, Die Slow is an altogether pleasant and endorphin-heavy psychedelic pop number.
There’s so much going on in the stop-motion trip of an accompanying video that I won’t even begin to describe it. All you need to know before you sit back and chill to it is that it took over a year to make, is comprised of over 3700 individual frames and is more colourful than the mosh pit at a Phish show. Enjoy.
Bark – Home (ft. Talibah Safiya)
Coming to you from the Big Apple are production duo Bark, comprised of Alessio and Alexey. Only in their relative infancy as an act, having kicked off back in 2014, the duo are set to release their very first EP in January of this year. Eponymously titled, each of the seven tracks on the EP will find Bark linking up with a wide variety of singer-songwriters to help bring their sound to life.
Their debut single from that EP is Home and features a vocal alley-oop from Brooklynite Talibah Safiya. The result is effortlessly cool, a minimalistic backbeat working together with some pulsing synths, a jarring yet simultaneously gorgeous combination of sounds layered over it at different points, all of it anchored by some heartache-inducing vocals from Safiya. The production is beyond slick, touching so many of your aural buttons all at once.
The video is conceptually spellbinding, depicting a struggle of sorts between a young girl and the car she’s roped to, going from a tug of war to a head on collision at the clip’s big finish.
Expect big things to come from a debut as rock solid as this. Bark the EP is out this month.
City And Colour – Lover Come Back Here/Wasted Love (Live on Jimmy Kimmel)
Something else a little different and not technically a music video but it’s my roundup and I do it basically Bam Margera (whatever the fuck I want). To that end, blown away as I was by City And Colour (the acoustic superhero whose alter ego is Dallas Green) making his network television debut in the US, I decided to give him some love this week and to give you a look at just how spinetingling his performance was.
Both are cuts from his latest LP If I Should Go Before You, a record that went straight to number one in Green’s native Canada and one that has been making waves around the world as yet another breathtaking album from the singer-songwriter. These songs are perhaps even more soulful and electrifying as they are on record, and for that, City And Colour cops a spot here this week.
Mac Miller – Weekend (ft. Miguel)
Having spent the last quarter of 2015 watching his third album GO:OD AM crash charts and capture hearts, Pittsburgh wonder kid Mac Miller isn’t about to barrel out of the wave of hype and popularity that resulted from that record. Full of clever collaborations with others sporting stars on the rise (Ab-Soul and Lil B to name a few), Miller’s best collaboration might have been saved for one of the finest RnB voices to really arrive in 2015 with Miguel.
The duo absolutely crush it on Miller’s brand new single, the jazzy, poppy, soulful Weekend. It’s a nifty cut, with Miller’s sharp-witted and thoroughly contagious slacker flow combining with Miguel’s cool as a cucumber soul vocals to create a song just perfect for its titular subject.
The music video that goes with it starts out as just your standard hip-hop joint, a night on the town shared by Mac and Miguel, who drop rhymes out the car window with the best of them, only to head down a slightly nightmarish route and finding themselves walking among a gaggle of really weird shadow people with pixelated faces. It all ends well though, leaving us hoping these two link up a bit more often in the future!