My favorite music videos have always been the ones disguising themselves as short films. There’s something more powerful about watching a video devoid of the artist who sings it, or one that puts them in a world outside of their projected image. Vincent Haycock is a director working almost exclusively—and brilliantly—in this medium. His videos for the likes of Calvin Harris, Florence Welch, and MSTRKRFT take the ethos and energy of a song and place it in a specific, often hyperrealistic setting. It’s as if the songs are merely the soundtrack to a lush, spare, complex, and deceivingly emotional cinematic journey.

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Analog-synth weirdos Black Moth Super Rainbow make some pretty strange videos to accompany their brand of warbly, vocoderized psychedelic music. With the release of their 2012 album Cobra Juicy, the first two videos from the album express that weirdness in very different ways.

Lead single Windshield Smasher starts with a familiar tale of an argument over a GPS malfunction that quickly leads into a frighteningly surreal confrontation with a crowd of latex-orange-skull-masked hoodlums assaulting the protagonists by giving them haircuts and force-feeding them birthday cake. I love the juxtaposition of uneasiness and lightheartedness in this video. The visceral reaction to the seeming danger makes the cake and haircuts even weirder to watch.

The second video, Hairspray Heart, starring Dustin Runnels (a.k.a. Goldust, of pro wrestling fame), reads less like a linear story and more like a hallucinatory transmission from something like an imagined public access television station. I feel like this video is like a confused, nostalgic dream of a kid from the 90s who’s been watching too much pro wrestling. You might want to watch some cat videos after this.

We featured some pretty rad videos on the site yesterday, so I figured I’d keep the trend alive with this new video for the song Cirrus by Uk musician, Bonobo. The song itself is an evolution of Bonobo’s sound, with a bit more of an upbeat rhythm to the track and less violins this time around. It’s certainly a winner in the sound department.

As for the video it was directed by Brighton-ish based director Cyriak who’s known for his somewhat mind-bending videos. The video for Cirrus is no different. What starts out as a few simple repeating elements soon becomes a chaotic collage of video snippets that take on a life of their own. He says that he uses Photoshop and After Effects for most of his animations, which I find totally astonishing. I’d suggest watching this video several times so that you can fully appreciate the amount of work he had to put into this incredible music video.

Thanks to Matthew Gore for the tip.