Best Music Videos of the Month

Director: Jay Ahn

"Safe" is Dumbfoundead's response to Hollywood's nasty habit of "whitewashing" Asian roles. The video replaces the faces of Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford, and other white actors with the rapper's own, and it looks incredible real. The message hits especially hard at the close, when Dumbfoundead's own smiley suburban family gets a new white dad.

"After the last Academy Awards and the regular whitewashing of Hollywood roles," the L.A. native said of the video, "I wrote this song and made this video to add my piece to the conversation. If you have any experiences or stories about this issue join the discussion here."

Director: PANAMÆRA & the little homies

Kendrick Lamar co-directed the debut video from Lance Skiiiwalker's, TDE's latest signee, and Skiiiwalker's future is looking bright. The video for "Could It Be" is dark and violent, but also playful and alluring. It manages to find the sweet spot between the two without feeling cheap or contrived. It's a weird, unsettling video, but only the good ones make you unsure how to feel.

Director: John Strong

"Easy" is hard to watch. The video chronicles a devastating romantic moment, a feeling of irreconcilability that the Spanish quartet confronts with extreme close-ups, smeared makeup, and shadowy lighting.

"'Easy' is the worst moment in the universe during a relationship cause you love him but he doesn't anymore," the video's description reads. "When you reach that point you can't help but self-destruct. There is just nothing you can do, it's too late to take it easy."

Director: Jon Riera

It's amazing to watch musicians get more comfortable with video's abundance of new technology. A few years ago a video like this would never have gotten off the page, yet here we are. Jazz Cartier decided to give 360-degree filmmaking a try for the "Red Alert / 100 Roses" double video, and it's a beautiful thing. We follow Jazz out of a flickering dungeon and onto the road, where he hangs out a car window, barreling towards a menacing lightning storm.

Throughout it all, Jazz prowls and crouches around the camera in a way that makes you think he's about to jump right out from the screen. It's up to you to find him, and that tension gives the whole video a unique electricity. There's also some excellent drone footage in this choose-your-own-adventure story, and the Toronto rapper uses the new tech to great effect in the song's final third—six Jazzes creep up from every angle, each one offering a different angle on the moment.

Directors: Skim Nasty & Lil Chano from 79th

Chance the Rapper’s music videos are always a sound representation of where he is as an artist. He’s shown his soft side (the warm, nostalgic one-shot take of “Sunday Candy”), his excitement at reaching the next level (“Angels” and its high-flying Chicago love letter), and now, the culmination of all his hard work.

“No Problem” is a star-studded celebration of Chance’s arrival at the top: Young Thug, Boosie, King Louie, and DJ Khaled make appearances alongside the song’s featured guests, 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne. But for being a video centered around rappers, it avoids falling into rap video stereotypes. No video vixens, no Lambos, just raps and Chano’s signature dance moves—and one money phone, courtesy of Thugger.

Director: Martin C. Pariseau

In the future, robot dance partnerships will be the new normal. But in 2016, Kaytranada is breaking new ground with his bionic friend. It's a Frankenstein story without all the horror—this robot doesn't have a bad circuit in his body, and he's an unbelievable dancer. Can't wait until these are available for pre-order.

Director: Lil B

Clams Casino has been making incredible beats for a minute, but a lot of his best material has gone out to other people. We're finally getting a debut studio album from Clams next month—32 Levels will be out July 15. After reminding us what makes him so damn good with "Blast," the producer teamed up with Lil B for "Witness," and the Based God also directed the video.

Clams told Pitchfork that Lil B wanted him to play a “James Bond type character, mysterious kind of guy” for the video. He does so with ease, driving Maseratis in a suit and tie while Lil B holds court in the forest.

Director: Matt Clark & Chris Davenport

Indie fans every did a double take when James Blake’s The Colour in Anything dropped. Another Blake/Justin Vernon collaboration had materialized in the form of “I Need A Forest Fire,” and it was even better than their previous collaboration, “Fall Creek Boys Choir.”

The dream is real, and the song’s video measures up. To visualize the sparse, ethereal production, director Matt Clark created an abstract sculpture museum full of moving sculptures. The camera orbits each object with pristine care, revealing changes only seen at certain angles. Butterflies, busts of Blake and Vernon's heads, and beautiful dust motes all get their moment in the camera's eye, and the song's fragile power retains its hold.

Directors: Sevdaliza & Emmanuel Adjei

Another month, another incredible video from Sevdaliza. The Iranian singer has really outdone herself this time, trading in her mastery of digital manipulation for jaw-dropping natural vistas. The short film is 15 minutes long, spans three songs, and tells a story of two lovers brooding through dark nights and euphoric highs.

Director: PussyKrew

Stunning animations, incredible dancing, and one of the hardest tunes in recent memory form a perfect storm in Cadenza's video for "No Drama." The glitchy graphics give the two lead dancers an otherworldly power, and PussyKrew's baroque digital aesthetic is the perfect complement. It could be misinterpreted as a horrifying and deeply dark, but the directors claimed otherwise in an interview with Noisey:

“The video may seem dark at first," they said, "but this darkness is not hopeless; it’s a state of matter where one can be reborn and reclaim their mastery…We decided to put the strong female characters at the front of the piece, as we thought they would be the best at translating the energy of the song and convey the message we wanted to communicate through the video.”