Lady Gaga, it turns out, did a smart thing. She’d made a shitty, ill-advised, creeped-out video with two guys who became public pariahs shortly thereafter, if they weren’t already. And then she scrapped it, though it’s certainly possible that she leaked the piece of it that went up on TMZ. She really had to scrap it, all things considered. But more artists should scrap music videos, for reasons other than PR-nightmare situations. Artists should scrap music videos just because they turn out boring. Do you know how many music videos turn out to be boring? Almost all of the music videos. I watch so many of these things, and at least 60% of the time, I don’t think the artists and directors even contemplate the question of why anyone would watch these things, what they might get out of them. But people make good videos, too, and five of them are below.

5. MØ – “Walk This Way” (Dir. Emile Rafael)

MØ hasn’t yet figured out the entire pop-star playbook, but she does have at least one part of it down perfectly: The dramatic posing. That’ll get you farther than you might think.

4. Coldplay – “A Sky Full Of Stars” (Dir. Kate Moross)

Why does anyone hate these doofs? Look at how happy they are! Look at the big, dumb grins when the confetti shoots out! Look at the delight on all these random pedestrians faces when they realize that they doof kings are among them! It’s all so nice!

3. OK Go – “The Writing’s On The Wall” (Dir. Damian Kulash, Jr., Aaron Duffy & Bob Partington)

More doof supremacy, except this time the doofs who scribble the elaborate cubes in their notebooks and then get you to try and figure out the optical illusions are beating the doof kings. Can you imagine how tedious it was to run back all these takes over and over until they got it exactly right? They did all that! They did it for us!

2. FKA twigs – “tw-Ache” (Dir. Tom Beard)

It’s hard to quantify something like “intensity of presence,” but FKA twigs has a shit-ton of it, more than just about anyone else. That’s why her videos are mesmerizing even when she’s not being sex-choked, or even when she’s not using CGI to bug her eyes out to anime levels of inhumanity.

1. Eels – “Lockdown Hurrican” (NSFW) (Dir. Andrew Van Baal)

What a fucked up little story.