Best Music Videos of the Month

Director: Radical Friend

L.A. punk outfit Ho99o9 are well-versed in making suspenseful, terrifying music videos, and they take things to a new level for "Blood Waves."

Fluorescent paint coats the walls and performers alike, creating a tornado of color and teeth that grabs your eyes and won't let go. Raw energy scorches the screen, complete with bloody wedding dresses and a BPM/heart rate monitor that frequently spikes. This video was a collaboration to promote Converse's Chuck Taylor II shoes—but this is branded content done right. Check their interactive version, too, for the full experience.

Director: Santi White and Sam Fleischner

Santigold’s swooning single from her 2016 return 99¢ embodies all the sweetness of Motown with a fresh touch to match the augmented reality of this breezy video.

"Can't Get Enough of Myself" stands out for the many, many ways the Brooklyn singer manages to sneak her famous friends into the video. We first link with Santigold as she strolls around New York with her Pomeranian. Everyone from Jay Z to Olivia Wilde show face on T-shirts and billboards, proving how Santigold actually is “pretty major.” It wraps up with Santi and some clones performing an extremely understated dance routine in a diner, which besides being pretty cheery and cute, provides an antithesis to Childish Gambino's diner nightmare.

Director: Marcus Söderlund and Yung Lean

Swedish rapper and original sad boy Yung Lean dove into the abyss for the "Miami Ultras" video. We find him living out what seem to be his last days in this bleak escapade into an isolated wilderness. He is quite literally digging his own grave—but at least he's doing it in style.

Lean’s aching chant of “I’m not looking for you,” sobs out to a world that won’t listen, and as you’ll see, neither will his poor dog. Peep the video for a taste of his sophomore effort Warlord, which came out last month, and a visual distillation of his gloomy aesthetic.

Director: Video God

George Clinton's legacy has never been in question. The man is a legend, but his continued influence, nearly 50 years after his first album with Parliament, is unprecedented.

Clinton has managed to stay on the cutting edge throughout his career, and the streak continued this month with an interstellar video for his Ice Cube and Kendrick Lamar-featuring "Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard On You." It's over-the-top in the best of ways—the costumes, the alien abduction plot, the dance party—the universe is a better place with George Clinton in it.

Read our interview with George Clinton about his collaboration with Kendrick Lamar and more here.

Director:Nathan R. Smith

D.R.A.M. showcased his 808/SNES feel on “Cha Cha,” but has since followed up with some irresistibly woozy slow jams. “Signals” is one of the most recent, a rose-tinted track that retains space despite a consistent build.

But D.R.A.M. never overdoes it—between the golden Virginia sun and the blurred greens and pinks, the color pallet of the video is nothing short of synesthetic. Special shout out to the lizard man and abundant smoke machines.

Director: Calmatic

The double video isn't groundbreaking anymore. To really push the bounds of YouTube viewership, you need to get up on... the triple video. Enter The Internet, and their full-course video for "Special Affair" / "Palace" / "Curse." Tyler, the Creator pops in for his guest verses, but Syd the Kid is the star of the show, first shot in a silky black and white before the frame explodes in color for the second track. Simple, creative, beautiful filmmaking—with the music to match.

Director: Quba Tuakli

Croydon, London's own Rocks FOE is a furious, masterful MC (and a great producer, too), and his track "Law," from the Legion EP is one of his most powerful tracks. It's a frenzied mix of horror movie music, rumbling bass, and pointed lyrics, and the video deserved something special.

Directed by Quba Tuakli and produced by AFTR MDNT, the video is something special indeed, a stark, black and white mini-movie which sees the tables turned on the police in the estate. It's not as simple as that though, with religious iconography, and memorable characters introduced throughout. Rocks FOE presides over the whole affair—he's the law.

Director:Matt Barnes

This video has a little bit of everything: BJ the Chicago Kid and his band breaking hearts with their coos and croons, Hannibal Buress pissing in the lemonade, and Kendrick dropping knowledge in the suburbs.

It's hard enough to land talent like Kendrick Lamar for a feature. But to get him in your video? That's next level. BJ the Chicago Kid pulled Kendrick and the honorable Hannibal Buress in for his "The New Cupid" video—Hannibal plays a disgruntled and rather destructive Cupid, while Kendrick raps his verse directly to BJ, passing on advice like, "Reality is fatality cursed on the future for family, wife and some kids."

Hannibal is the real star of the show, though. The comedian makes an amazing drunk nymph, and looks pretty good in a mullet, too.

Director: Awesome Inc.

What happens when you put Big Boi, Phantogram, Run The Jewels, and Adult Swim in the same room? Some of the most twisted animation since Freaknik: The Musical and Superjail! to ever hit the airwaves.

"Run For Your Life/Born To Shine" is a cartoon trip through the darkest, dingiest corners of the imagination—our five heroes visit a grungy strip club, squish rats, start fights, gamble, get trapped in paintings, and are generally besieged on all sides by the forces of evil. The beautiful, twisted animation comes courtesy of Awesome Inc., the team behind Adult Swim's hit show Squidbillies.

Director: Nabil

ANOHNI's upcoming HELPLESSNESS album doesn't hold back when it comes to political messages. The singer's objection to drone warfare takes the form of "Drone Bomb Me," a song produced by Hudson Mohawke and written from the perspective of an Afghani child whose family has been killed by an unmanned strike.

The Nabil-directed video stars Naomi Campbell as Anohni's stand-in—the war and violence is communicated by a group of contorting modern dancers who swirl like a tornado around Campbell's heart-stopping performance. "She dreams of being annihilated," ANOHNI said of the song's subject. "She is kind of looking up at the sky, and she's gotten herself to a place where she just wants to be killed by a drone bomb too."

Sometimes it takes an abstraction of reality like this video to begin to comprehend the incomprehensible—these stories are happening in real life. Just because we don't see it on the news, doesn't mean it should be ignored.