Even More Good 2005 Videos I Missed the First Time Around

Laura Veirs‘ bittersweet brand of singer/songwriter-ness is a little too Starbucks-y for my tastes, but her video for “Galaxies” (Terri Timely) is funny and very well-crafted.

Xiu Xiu’s video for “Muppetface” (Chris Cruse) probably should have made the top 20. It’s bizarre, disturbing, and challenging–in other words, the perfect complement to Xiu Xiu’s music.

Okkervil River’s album Black Sheep Boy didn’t do nearly as much for me as it did for so many others–I do like “Black”, though–but they can always be counted on for visual innovation. The spotlit/cutoutanimation style in the video for “For Real” (Zak Margolis) is no exception.

There isn’t another current artist whose actual musical content matters less than Madonna. Not that it’s especially bad or anything, but it’s always the third or fourth thing discussed–after her stylistic leaps, anglophilic tendencies, and relevance to modern culture. Which leads me to the video for “Hung Up“, (Johan Renck) which (gasp) reveals that she got her hair did 70’s style, still has a MILF bod, and blindly leaps toward any trend that seems remotely new (remember how she fawned over Ricky Martin at the Grammys a while ago?)–this video in particular has that urban jumping/dancing thing that I’ve seen around the web-o-nets, that she will no doubt lay claim to the creation of, like the Vogue. In other news, some people are calling her “Oldfrapp”, which I find hilarious.