This is Required Listening our weekly blog crush-a-thon wherein we laud praise and adoration upon the things that have been relentlessly streaming into our earholes, dilating our pupils and causing surges of fanboy/girl love bliss. Here’s what we’re in love with this week:
Something is in the air. Maybe it’s the cooler temps, the shortening days or the falling foliage but there is a disturbance in the force, or a wave in the zeitgeist if you will, that is longing for the beach. Longing for the beach? Yes. As autumn truly started unfolding here in NY this week the tide came in with four of the coolest beach-centric videos ever.
Freelance Whales Melodic Search For Sea Spirits
NY indie band and beach-friendly named, Freelance Whales just premiered their new video for “Spitting Image” which consists of the band holed up in a geodesic dome (props to the homey Bucky Fuller) on a beach probing the deep sea for spirits using sound waves of course. The video blends vibes of that episode of Big Bang Theory where Sheldon and the gang spend time at the North Pole with some of the vibe from Life Aquatic. In other words it’s like peanut butter and chocolate or milk and cookies. Anyhoo, always nice to shout out loud when an excellent song gets paired with an excellent video. Also nice to hear Doris Cellar on lead vocals for this one. Hit up their new album Diluvia for more Whale action.
Sleeping With Sirens Fans Do Not Sleep In
This Tuesday we premiered the new video for “Roger Rabbit” from post-hardcore band Sleeping With Sirens and I swear it was not even 9am when the clip already had thousands of facebook likes and tweety tweets. Those Sleeping With Sirens fans out there are clearly overachieving, early-rising vociferous music lovers to say the least. The video itself is a charming all beach all the time affair. From cruising on a boat along the coast to strolling hand in hand on the shore to strumming around those idyllic beach campfires we all see in movies but never experience in real life (at least I haven’t, sad face.)
Cayucas’s Ode To The Southern California Sun
Cayucas is a Southern Cali band that just signed to hypercool label Secretly Canadian. They appear to have a similar crush on their native land as another west coast supremacist band Best Coast. This video for “Cayucos” is a mini-drama following a group of four dudes as they are stalked by an angelic blonde at the beach (if only we all had such problems.) The whole clip is super-saturated by golden California sun as the characters frolic back and forth between the shore and their well-manicured modernist suburban homes. And as much as it annoyed me to constantly be getting the song title confused with the bands name (Cayucas/Cayucos – you know the band is f’n with us on this one) I have listened to this song probably 25 times this week and love it.
Best Use Of Green Screen Ever Award Goes To Mac DeMarco
Get ready for three minutes and fifty five seconds of delicious weirdness b/c this video for “She’s Really All I Need” by Mac DeMarco is a different breed of dinosaur. As three ladies and some band dudes linger on the beach, well it’s more like they are actually floating on the water Jesus style, a stream of deliciously unrelated images are super imposed on top of them. From alligators and guitarists with bags on their heads to some truly avant-garde choreography. This video is a text book example on how to do bad good. More on Mac at Captured Tracks. And props to KVRX radio at UT Austin for turning us on to Mac on this week’s College Radio Countdown via mtvU Tumblr.
All for now. We’ll be back next Friday with more Required Listening.
