Production Company

Biscuit Filmworks

Legendary creative Juan Cabral blends fashion, tech and a surreal sense of perspective, in this evocative promo for Argentinian rockers Babasonicos.&nbsp;The video for Advertencia takes place on an empty residential street, surrounded by tower blocks and industrial buildings. A handful of cameras are set up on tripods and spotted across the location, adding a mysterious vibe to the concept, which is built upon with a variety of unusual props, camera angles and dad-dancing.&nbsp;The sandy colour palette and inspired styling create an almost fashion editorial style aesthetic to the video, whilst the playfulness in every scene reflects the veteran band's lively performance style.&nbsp;An absorbing feat, with plenty of rewatch value.&nbsp;

Argentina

Juan Cabral

Rock

Babasonicos 'Advertencia' by Juan Cabral

Babasonicos-'Advertencia'-by-Juan-Cabral

Sam Smith reunites with regular collaborators, the French contemporary dance collective and directors&nbsp;(LA)HORDE, to launch a new chapter in their&nbsp;journey, for the gospel-inspired To Be Free.Filmed at the Warsaw concert venue in Brooklyn, the visual stays true to the purity and simplicity of the song and its production, as a crowd gathers at the venue and are revealed to be a choir - the TwoCity Chorus - who join Sam on stage.And then their&nbsp;performance evolves into a joyous communal event.

United Kingdom

(LA) HORDE

Gospel

Sam Smith 'To Be Free' by (LA)HORDE

Sam Smith - To Be Free (Official Video)

For a Talking Heads classic - their greatest early song - arrives a new video, delivered by director Mike Mills and actor Saoirse Ronan. And its a remarkable and brilliant thing to behold, addressing&nbsp;one of the most important subjects of all: what goes on&nbsp;between our ears.Saoirse Ronan plays a woman who's mental state is in a constant state of flux. We find this out by following her repeatedly through her daily routine, that often-employed device that's given its own twist here: while the surroundings repeat, her character is never the same twice. We are observing a woman in the hold of her bi-polarity - or multi-polarity.&nbsp;It's an outstanding performance, as one might expect from a screen actor of her quality, but although it arguably looks like it could come from an independent movie that Mills might direct and Ronan star in, here she's delivering a new version of herself in each accelerated day, within&nbsp;a few brief moments.The impact is to take the viewer on their own journey, from observation to understanding to ultimately, relating to the character - all while listening to one of the great punk/post-punk tracks of all. She's out there, but actually, as she navigates her way through the quotidian grind,&nbsp;how different is she from the rest of us?&nbsp;

United States

Mike Mills

Alt Rock

Alternative

Talking Heads 'Psycho Killer' by Mike Mills

Talking Heads - Psycho Killer (Official Video)

HAIM return with a sumptuous video by Camille Summers Valli for the first single from the sisters' first album since 2020.It's Summers Valli's first promos since her acclaimed work for METTE in 2023 (including Mama's Eyes, winner of Video of the Year at the UKMVAs). As with those for METTE, the director employs her considerable powers here to draw the viewer into a powerful and intimate experience with the band's&nbsp;lead singer Alana Haim.The video for Relationships brings us into the world of Alana and her sisters - and into the euphoria of Alana's affair with her lover, played by Drew Starkey. This is portrayed at a cinematic level consistent with a movie or high quality TV drama, and&nbsp;HAIM are clearly comfortable in this territory. After all, they have been regular collaborators with&nbsp;Paul Thomas Anderson and Jake Schreier.But there is nothing in the sister's fine canon of music videos which is quite as frank and sensual as this, nor does it forget its function as a music video. The effect is stunning.&nbsp;

Camille Summers-Valli

Kodak

Indie

HAIM 'Relationships' by Camille Summers Valli

HAIM - Relationships (Official Video)

Spike Jonze returns to music videos, co-directing with Mary Wigmore, to celebrate the friendship of two born entertainers: Coldplay's Chris Martin and Dick Van Dyke, 99 years young.This remarkable film is a celebration of Dick Van Dyke's showbiz career - including his famous Cockney chimney-sweep role in Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and his huge success&nbsp;on TV in the 1960s. But also rather more than that, as Chris Martin performs the song All My Love to Dick at his home, surrounded by family on his 99th birthday. That is the cue for&nbsp;Dick himself gets involved in singing, and dancing to the song. In his 100th year, he is still very much the song-and-dance man he's been all his life.This is also a celebration of the friendship between the two men, based on huge mutual respect, and Jonze and Wigmore's craft is to ensure that comes through palpably on screen. In this director's cut - the official video is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSeaHfkd3M8" target="_blank">here</a> - we hear Jonze's prompting with questions to Dick Van Dyke, allowing the veteran entertainer to reflect upon his life and also display his enduring positivity, and alertness to fresh creativity.&nbsp;And then,&nbsp;with a little prompting from Spike, for good measure Chris Martin composes a tribute song to Dick on the spot. It's heartwarming, cheering stuff. And although not strictly a Christmas-themed video,&nbsp;what better time to welcome this into our lives?&nbsp;

Spike Jonze

Mary Wigmore

Final Cut

Coldplay 'All My Love' (Directors' Cut) by Spike Jonze & Mary Wigmore

Coldplay - ALL MY LOVE (Official Video) (Directors' Cut)

Juan Cabral, one of the world's top commercials directors, has made an unexpected&nbsp;foray into music videos for veteran Argentinian alt-rock band&nbsp;Babasónicos, with an intoxicating mix of theatre, choreography and crime&nbsp;noir. And plenty of fish.The video is for the song Tajada, which&nbsp;refers to the Argentine dish of sliced plantains, but they never get a look in. Cabral clearly prefers sardines. He creates a powerful visual atmosphere&nbsp;with tightly edited shots of dancers, heavy strobing and the regular sight of silvery fish&nbsp;flying through the air and slapping on the studio floor.Intense and absurd, it's intriguing&nbsp;from start to finish. Even if you&nbsp;may not have a clue what's going on.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Alternative Rock

Babasónicos 'Tajada' by Juan Cabral

Babasonicos - Tajada (Video Oficial)

Dexter Navy presents how Sampha is touched with a special kind of magic in the video for Only.The acclaimed singer-songwriter begins bending reality when&nbsp;he studies a book titled LAHAI - the name of his forthcoming, long-awaited second album - and then ponders his reflection. When he ventures into the outside world he finds himself capable of all kinds of otherworldly powers, sometimes struggling to control them.A number of magical moments arrive in an understated fashion - which seems a perfectly pitched visual metaphor for Sampha's talent. And it makes it more impressive with every viewing.

Dexter Navy

Scott Wright

Cinelab Film and Digital

Soul

Sampha 'Only' by Dexter Navy

SAMPHA [ONLY]

Sonic adventurers MGMT are no strangers to wild, visually pioneering videos. In fact, their entire music video output is like an odyssey into the surreal minds of some truly fantastic directors. From early Tintori gems that are now modern classics, to this latest and very rare outing from Tom Kuntz, his second for MGMT.You&#39;d think Kuntz should be a regular on the music video circuit, with the incredibly distinct, playful visual aesthetic and sharp comic wit that&#39;s earned him legendary status in the commercials world. But no, Kuntz music videos are rare; when they do pop up, well, there&#39;s just nothing else quite like them.After his first video for MGMT, 2010&#39;s desert epic &#39;Congratulations&#39;, which featured slow, drawn-out shots following Andrew, Ben and a peculiar desert creature on their long sandy journey, his latest video is the complete opposite.&#39;Your Life is a Lie&#39; is probably best described as a rapid, amphetamine-fuelled episode of Sesame Street. Lyrics drawn in ketchup, a skeleton chorus, an incoming fax that tells you you&#39;re living a lie, even Henry Winkler briefly shows up to console an upset middle school girl in her soccer uniform.Each line of the song is met with a ceaseless montage of shots that illustrate what&#39;s being sung in the most obscure and incredible way. Not only that, but practically none of the seconds-long shots ever get repeated. Well, except every four beats when the cowbell strikes and an old guy wearing an open Acapulco shirt takes the same bite of a banana, or a guy in a suit and tie repeatedly gets hit in the head with a green ball.Be prepared to see pretty much every shot of this video appear as an animated GIF and spread on Tumblr like wildfire. Really, there&#39;s no one else that could have pulled this off like Kuntz, to create a video that&#39;s worthy of being added to MGMT&#39;s impressive catalogue. Enjoy.

Tom Kuntz

Indie, Alternative

MGMT 'Your Life is a Lie' by Tom Kuntz

MGMT - Your Life Is A Lie

Some ET, a dash of Star Wars and a fair dollop of Chris Cunningham and Leftfield's Afrika Shox... it's the new, more gentle weird of MGMT, courtesy of Tom Kuntz, making a rare visit to music video world. 
Tom eschews his much-loved sidesplitting style in favour of poignant strangeness - in a similar vein to Andreas Nilsson's latest Yeasayer - and highly impressive production values. Sonny Gerasimonwicz, the man behind Spike Jonze's Wild Things, designed the alien buzzard creature and Legacy FX brought it to life.

<div><embed src="http://adland.tv/sites/default/modules/swftools/shared/flash_media_player/player.swf" width="533" height="332" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" allownetworking="all" flashvars="image=http://adland.tv/adland_video/150900/52464/thumb.jpg&amp;skin=http://adland.tv/sites/default/modules/adland_video/modieus.swf&amp;file=http://adland.tv/adland_video/150900/52464/embed.mp4&amp;plugins=viral-2&amp;viral.allowmenu=true&amp;viral.link=http://adland.tv/commercials/cut-run-s-steve-gandolfi-edited-new-tom-kuntz-directed-mgmt-music-video-congratulations&amp;viral.onpause=true&amp;viral.oncomplete=true&amp;viral.functions=embed,link"/><a href="http://adland.tv/commercials/cut-run-s-steve-gandolfi-edited-new-tom-kuntz-directed-mgmt-music-video-congratulations"> </a></div>

MGMT’s Congratulations by Tom Kuntz