Best Music Videos of the Month

Director: Wolf Haley

Tyler, the Creator's creative chops are not to be fucked with. Even a simple concept like a split screen takes on new dimensions in Tyler's hands—the video for "Perfect" is at turns hypnotic and unsettling, with Tyler covered in butterflies and Kali Uchs unperturbed by the chorus of sunflowers at her back. Another weird, wonderful offering from Tyler.

Director: RUFFMERCY

Zelooperz's blistering "ISBD," a Bulletproof Dolphin-produced cut off his Bothic album, got an appropriately insane video.

The visuals for "ISBD" feature animation from RUFFMERCY, and he channels the music's chaotic aggression into an endless series of unspooling colors and hand-drawn squiggles. It should come with a trigger warning for epileptics, but for those able to sustain a barrage of flashing colors and skulls, this is a must-watch.

Director: LL

Chance the Rapper and Towkio proudly represent their hometown of Chicago through music, videos, and advocacy. That includes bringing local dance/music style footwork with them to late night TV and to Towkio's latest music video. Footwork a seriously kinetic style of dance, and the two rappers brought out some friends to do it right for Towkio's "Clean Up."

The result is a vibrant, trip through Towkio's stream of consciousness, and a dance lesson to boot. Special shout-out to the broom man at the end.

Director(s): FKA twigs and Imma

FKA twigs returned with another surprise release this week—"Good to Love" is a collaboration with producer Rick Nowels (Adele, Lana Del Rey), and it shows. The song is one of twigs' most straightforward efforts to date, and one of her most beautiful.

The simple, pristine nature of the song is mirrored in the video: we join twigs in bed as she twists and dances with the sheets, adorned only by an exquisite array of rings and other jewelry.

Director: Film The Future

Usher joined the growing call for police reform this month in no uncertain terms. The video for "Chains" is shot in a shadowy black and white, the darkness broken only by the flash of police sirens.

It's a fittingly dramatic and heartbreaking visual, and is especially effective when Nas' verse is rapped into the camera by children protesting their own murders.

Director(s): Director X and Tim Erem

The hotly anticipated video for Rihanna's "Work" arrived this month, and it didn't disappoint. It's a two-for-one deal, with back-to-back videos helmed by different directors.

We first hear "Work" during a night out at Toronto's The Real Jerk. Rihanna celebrates her West Indian heritage, dancing to the track's dancehall beat as the place gets increasingly sweaty.

Things take a more intimate turn for the second half—Drake and Rihanna run the song back from a private room. The purple and blue lights set the mood, and Drake can't stop staring as Rihanna dances.

Director(s): David Helman and Dustin Lane

Sometimes the simplest concepts are the most effective. Vince Staples spends the video for "Lift Me Up" getting lifted up, levitating above the city streets like he's part of the rapture.

The video is constantly tilting, whether we're circling Vince's dead-set delivery from above or sliding off the beach. The result is disorienting, but that's the point—Staples doesn't always leave his audience warm and fuzzy, and why should he?

Director: Rob Shaw

Aesop Rock has already cemented his place as one of history's great lyricists, but don't sleep on his music videos. "Rings" is a beautiful concept executed perfectly: Aesop is hit by a car while he's looking at a missing persons poster of himself, and wakes up to rap mid-surgery with half his head missing.

The operating table is intercut with an animation of the rapper as a wooden stick figure with lead for hands. His elegant drawings are destroyed by a wolf-snake creature, a stand-in Aesop's regretful decision to leave painting and visual art behind.

If "Rings" is any indication, Aesop Rock's The Impossible Kid will mark the return of a king. It's out on April 29.

Director: Hiro Murai

This music video is insane. Not that we'd expect anything less when you combine two creative minds like Baauer and Hiro Murai (his previous video credits range from Earl Sweatshirt and Childish Gambino to St. Vincent), but this is something special. Novelist opens the proceedings with his razor-sharp verse while British soldiers out of the Revolutionary War march down a city street.

The soldiers face off against an opposing army as Leikeli47 steps in to deliver her own blistering bars, and carnage ensues. Granted, they're using muskets, so reloading takes a while. The result of this warfare, however, is depressingly familiar: there's no one left to fight by the song's end.

Director: Melina Matsoukas

The song that launched a thousand blustering Fox News segments had an equally powerful video before the Super Bowl even started. Beyoncé's first song in a long while has fans lining up to "get in formation," and it's thanks in no small part to the gorgeous, groundbreaking video.

Everything from police brutality to the achingly slow response to Hurricane Katrina falls under Bey's gaze for her latest awe-inspiring video.

"Formation" is equal parts condemnation and proclamation—as filmmaker and critic dream hampton told NPR, "It's about a black future [where] we are imagining ourselves having power and magic... and I think it's beautiful."