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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmgBdqsOwLo

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)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ18K4Kg14k

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?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1DDgKWc2HY

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xztWzyDogok

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2qRaEO7Uok

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)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC0HLD3gzfw

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlG2xeuBOJ4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5jWSa_f2Fo

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)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N29-54dhVHg

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!

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:

Fascinator – The Traveller

Johnny Mackay, the artist otherwise known as Fascinator is at it again with the second track off of his much-anticipated debut album Man and its music video. The track is titled The Traveller, and is deliciously off-beat, layers of funk and dream pop punctuated by haunting vocals and regal trumpets befitting of the subject of the video, which is excellent in its simplicity.

It’s a day in the life of your average New York City dwelling, decked in full battle armour knight. Eating his morning serve of Special K, riding the subway to and from New York’s Renaissance Fair (where of course nobody bats an eyelid, because New York) and going medieval on everybody’s ass getting in on all the fun.

Man is due out early 2016 via Spinning Top Records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7C7-eV0wDs&feature=youtu.be

 

Manor – Grand Mal

Melbourne duo Manor have been on our watchlist of late. They just last week released a new tune, Grand Mal, and this week released its music video counterpart. The track itself is an odd and spinetingling hybrid of psychedelic and industrial, vocalist Caitlin Duff’s ghostly vocals wrapped up in some jarring instrumentation from Manor’s other half Nathaniel Morse.

The video is a kaleidoscope of colours and shapes interposed with overlapping shots of Duff, it fits the sonic appeal of Grand Mal perfectly. The track is from their upcoming EP, and if this and previous single Can You Hear Me Talking At You are anything to go by it should be a solid bedrock of a debut release upon which the duo can build bigger things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVcsnnhAviM&feature=youtu.be

 

Daughter – Numbers

London-based trio Daughter have an album of their own due out in the waking light of 2016, their sophomore LP Not To Disappear. They’re getting all kinds of ambitious with it as well, this week releasing the second installment in a cinematic trilogy they’ve commissioned for the album. The first was Doing The Right Thing earlier in the year and now we have a sequel in Numbers.

The tune kicks off with some minimalistic instrumentation surrounding the gorgeous vocals of frontwoman Elena Tonra before taking flight via the aid of an unrelenting drumbeat that dances around some nifty low-key guitars, and from there it doesn’t touch the ground again. The kind of song made for late nights and loneliness, Daughter do a wonderful job of bringing the listener all but to their knees. The journey of the woman in red around a neon-drenched after dark urban wonderland is beautifully shot and only enhances a wonderful song.

Not To Disappear is out January 15th, 2016 via 4AD/Remote Control Records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-fD3PIRSO8

 

Tindersticks – Lucinda

Nottingham rockers Tindersticks have been plugging away for more than two decades, putting out ten albums in total so far and just a few months shy of releasing their 11th, The Waiting Room, in January of next year. It’s set to be an ambitious record both sonically and visually, with each song to be accompanied by a short film.

Hey Lucinda is one of those songs and it’s absolutely bone-chilling in both sound and context. It’s a duet between Tindersticks frontman Stuart Staples and Lhasa De Sela, a friend of his who tragically lost her life after recording the track. It burns slowly and builds beautifully throughout, the video a dusky wander through the seen-better-days nightlife of an English town.

The Waiting Room is out January 22nd, 2016 via Inertia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxZS7uXSvEU

 

Plaitum – LMHY

Another London-based act, this time a duo, is Plaitum. They’re another one we’ve had our eye on for quite a while and their latest single and video for LMHY, from their forthcoming and eponymous debut EP, are keeping them glued firmly there. It’s electro-pop gone through a grimy shredder, urgent vocals that alternate between ethereal and screaming, twisting and writhing around stark and shuddering synths and off-kilter trap beats.

The video is a mesmerising lo-fi light show, shots of the duo filtered through all manner of clashing greens and oranges that arrests your eyes as much as the sound does your ears.

Plaitum is out December 4th via Wolf Tone/Caroline Australia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KKuHOuHLTU

 

Here We Go Magic – Be Small

Brooklyn indie rock trio Here We Go Magic recently released their newest LP Be Small, their first since 2012s A Different Ship. Critically acclaimed as an album, the band have since released the eponymous first single from it as well as a video to go with it.

I loved it, a contemporary grim reaper who wears uh… sandals and wheels around a suitcase along with the traditional tattered black robes and hood, wandering around the pedestrian parks and streets of Hudson New York like it ain’t a thing.

Be Small is out now via Secretly Canadian on Inertia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2Ab4_3OgWM&feature=youtu.be

 

Ivan Ooze – Fire

Ivan Ooze, apart from sharing the name of that evil purple motherfucker who brainwashed all the parents in the Power Rangers movie, is a Melbourne MC who continues to drop jaws everywhere. His latest single is FIRE, both in title and in general sonic terms.

The video is awash with scuzz and sleaze, featuring burning dictionaries, tables, laptops, spliffs (you name it, he’ll burn it) and an array of 0ther pyrotechnics around an orange-jumpsuited Ooze, whose snarling machine gun flow never once hints at relenting. The production is fittingly industrial and stomps along wonderfully as Ooze shrieks over the chorus ‘I bring the fuckin’ fire’ (pronounced ‘fiyahhh’ of course).

Not your conventional Aussie hip hop by any means, refreshingly bizarre and masterfully crafted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2zdtDj2AAE&app=desktop

 

Elizabeth Rose – Shoulda Coulda Woulda

I’m not someone who thoroughly enjoys pop music usually, but Sydney songstress Elizabeth Rose has really captured me with latest single Shoulda Coulda Woulda. Co-produced by M-Phazes, the track has been spun like a spiderweb on Australian airwaves since its release, hypnotic and warped synths the driving force behind Rose’s sugary (but never saccharine) pop voice.

That’s what ensnared me, the sound is sonically pleasing pop but not in the traditional sense. Everything about the track, the lyricism and the production in particular, are highly intelligent and deftly-crafted. The video is mesmerising too, featuring Rose trapped in a 360 degree mirror room, alternating neon lights and rhythmic dancing all but chokeholding the attention of your eyeballs.

The track is from her upcoming debut LP Intra, all indications thus far suggesting Australia has produced yet another wonderfully talented pop artist in Elizabeth Rose.

Intra is out March 4th via Midnight Feature/Inertia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HhL0V_EnRE

 

MS MR – Criminals

Heading back to the Big Apple for the next video, we’ve got the latest from much-acclaimed duo MS MR. Their latest offering is for single Criminals. It’s nothing short of infectious, each verse guided along by the heavenly vocals of singer Lizzy Plapinger until the driving chorus drops in and grabs you by the collar. The production from the MR of MS MR, Max Hershenow, is nothing short of stellar. Criminals is multi-layered dream pop with lashings of darkness and its thumping chorus will have you hitting the repeat button to no end.

The video landing with it is a neon dream, directed by Charlotte Rutherford, who has previously worked with artists like Charlie XCX and Marina And The Diamonds. Like the song it visualises, the video is full of glitzy neon lights but with a shadowy vibe throughout. Watch it and be enthralled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1jI774ZWF8

 

Polish Club – Beeping

Having dropped their debut EP just last month and winning over damn near everyone, Sydney power-duo Polish Club are set for a massive breakout very soon. Their raucous old time rock and roll sound, driven by the raw and guttural vocals of frontman Novak that are damn near inimitable, is catchier than the clap and few new releases from an Australian band have grabbed me the way theirs did.

Beeping, their third single from their eponymous debut, was one of those tracks. Two and a half minutes of raw, foot-tapping rock and roll straight out of the garage. The video is lo-fi renaissance art in itself, made using a fucking photocopier. I don’t even want to know how many hours this took to put together, just watch and appreciate and tell everybody you got on the bandwagon while there were still seats.

Polish Club is out now via MGM Distribution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-iy8ns0CLg