We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

LA based band Fool’s Gold has made the instant summer jam with that guitar line in “Suprise Hotel” which will be released at the end of September. Made up of members from Foreign Born, We Are Scientists, Glasser and The Fall, they play an interesting mix of African rhythms and 80’s pop and from the looks of this video, you should go see them live.

MP3 >> Fool’s Gold – Surprise Hotel

I honestly don’t know anything about this band, other than their name (Kindness), the song title (”Gee Up”), and that the video was directed by Jack Latham. The songs on their MySpace page sound like Arthur Russell and New Order scoring a long lost Manhunter-era Michael Mann film. Nice.

Folk troubadour Cass McCombs‘ latest single, “Dreams ComeTrue Girl,” is a trifecta of radness: it’s a song that’s both soul-soothing and heart-crushing, it’s a video that’s languidly nostalgic– not to mention, alittle bit epic– and cinematic goddess Karen Black has lent her spooky magic to both. Allegedly, the video was based on characters from a feature screenplay that McCombs wrote with director Aaron Brown, who appears in the clip as a Demiurge, “a supernatural being that controls time and space, as well as the actions of McCombs and Ms. Karen Black.” I have no idea what that means… but let’s hope they get their movie made!

Karen O is gracing the cover of Nylon Magazine this month– and she looks staggeringly awesome, naturally. Here are a couple of quotes from the interview:

Karen O, On Her Adolescence: “I used to be fairly shy… but you know, I was a volcano ready to blow. I went through quite a few styles. The Ugly Face – no, believe me, it was ugly. I was breaking out with zits… [and later] I had my hair pulled back and the hoop earrings. I was interested in style, but not necessarily in fashion… If we were playing spin the bottle, all the boys would be pretty bummed to kiss the halfie. But as you grow up, you start to realize what an asset it is to have that part of you. It shapes you.”

Hey Karen, Tell Us About Your Music for Where the Wild Things Are! “We wrote music that would be easy for kids to sing along with. The songs have that innocence and spirit with poppy hooks here and there. Simple, emotional, sweet stuff.”

And here’s the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs video, “Heads Will Roll”:

24-year-old filmmaker Ray Tintori is a rising star in the music video world. He’s quickly gained a reputation for having a unique and visually compelling style thanks to last year’s psychedelic MGMT video, “Time to Pretend,” and the beautifully glitchy celebration of compression artifacts that is Chairlift’s “Evident Utensil.” But before he started his music video career, Tintori produced a pair of ridiculously fun short films as an undergraduate student in college.

Forming a tight diptych of short cinema, “Death To The Tinman,” and “Jettison Your Loved Ones” both employ a nostalgic black and white aesthetic, exhilarating rushed narration and over-the-top deadpan to great effect. While he wears his influences on his sleeve (most obviously, Guy Maddin and Wes Anderson), Tintori manages to go beyond mere hero-worshipy emulation and produces work that feel like it’s building upon those directors’ work rather than copying it. Check out the L. Frank Baum-inspired “Death to the Tinman,” below– I dare you not to enjoy it.

This clip for Beautiful Swimmers’ single “O Yea,” uses found footage from an 80s workout tape and then processes it through a seemingly simple ghosting effect that hearkens back to some of the earliest experiments in video art. In concept, it all seems pretty par for the course– and yet the end result is more than the sum of its parts. Thanks to some skillful editing by Aurora Halal and Ashiq Khondker, the video exudes a glittering and glitchy charm that matches the song perfectly.