As you read this, my colleague Chris DeVille and I are in Chicago, fleeing our normal dad responsibilities to watch some bands play in a park. (Say hi! I'm the tall guy, and Chris is the guy who violently cracks his neck a lot.) So this week's column only surveys the videos that were already out as of Thursday lunchtime-ish. It still has a lot of good videos. This week was a busy one. Our picks are below.
5. Ariana Grande - "God Is A Woman" (Dir. Dave Meyers)
Here we have a surreal visual feast, a feminist phantasmagoria, that doubles as a perfectly functional big-budget pop video. And it's only the week's fifth-best video!
4. Bully - "Guess There" (Dir. Aleia Murawski & Samuel Copeland)
You will believe a snail can skateboard!
3. The Decemberists - "Once In My Life" (Dir. Autumn De Wilde)
I promise that this really is a truly beautiful video and that it's not just on this list because of freaky-tall solidarity.
2. Benny Blanco - "Eastside" (Feat. Khalid & Halsey) (Dir. Jake Schreier)
A worthy biographical follow-up to Cashmere Cat's similarly great "9 (After Coachella)," hitting all those same satisfying emotional and aesthetic notes.
1. Trust Fund - "Abundant" (Dir. James Hankins)
A lovely little low-budget encapsulation of all the absurdities of being in an indie rock band, from a guy who just decided to stop being in an indie rock band. I love the callbacks to two earlier Trust Fund videos, both of which were just as improbably great.
