As if you couldn’t tell just by looking, photographer David LaChappelle is one of the co-directors (along with John Byrne) of Florence + The Machine’s latest video. The clip for “Spectrum”—the new single from Florence Welch’s sophomore album, Ceremonials—marries Welch’s oddball, melodramatic pop sensibilities to LaChappelle’s colorfully camp vision. Scenes of ballerinas in snowy white tutus straight out of Swan Lake are intercut with luridly bright tableaus that have LaChappelle’s fingerprints all over them. Pair all that with a galloping beat and Welch’s spirit-quaking wail and you’ve got one hell of a video.
Photo: Jeff Elstone
We’ve been eagerly awaiting the second single from French music video director Yoann Lemoine’s band, Woodkid, for months and it’s finally here: “Run Boy Run” picks up seemingly where Woodkid’s mesmerizing first video, “Iron,” left off. Both videos where shot in black and white, share imagery—the enigmatic castle in the sky, the schoolboy hero, etc.—and are similarly epic in sound. Lemoine has a thing for orchestral arrangements, and here the flute and pipes give the song a triumphant feeling. If “Iron” was the battle, “Run Boy Run” is the victory march.
Jogyo’s video for “Rude Boy” isn’t exactly new, but it just popped onto our radar thanks to New York watering hole Rockbar’s upcoming Queer Music Festival. The Jamaican-born, New York-based duo are playing the two-day event on June 8, and their frenetic mix of breakneck drum-and-bass and infectious dancehall rhymes definitely caught our attention.
Brooklyn electro duo Light Asylum are masters of moody dance music, and in the video for their latest single, “House of Dust,” out singer Shannon Funchess is scary as all hell. The clip is filthy—in the mud-caked, ooze-dripping sense—and the song itself is as bleak as a charred forest. Yet, despite Funchess’s fearsome performance and the overall sense of dread in “Dust,” it really is a surprisingly danceable track. And we can’t deny there is something oddly beautiful about the video’s almost macabre imagery.
Michael
Brilliant and beautiful, and those boys are sooooo handsomel. Merci..xo