ICYMI is a series featuring new and notable releases you (and we) may have missed
Art by Enne Goldstein, you can find more of their work here
“Girlfriend Degree” – The Paranoyds
The Paranoyds have teased their upcoming album Carnage Bargain with brand new music video “Girlfriend Degree”. In this video each woman has a lucid dream about being the perfect barbie like girlfriend. But their dreams quickly become nightmares, as a spruced up corvette drives over the cliff edge, a girlfriend degree is rewarded an F, and an all female gig is ambushed by none other than Ken doll himself.
The message is pretty clear. This band has no interest in fulfilling a set quota, or standing in the shadow of a male counterpart. Their corvette is set on its own path, and the music it drives to is full of an energy, fierceness, and purpose that is almost impossible to resist headbanging to. Give it a listen, jam to the groove, and always snatch the guitar back from any Ken who thinks he can do a better job.
-Edgar Jackson
“The Next Fix” – Crack Cloud
So this video came out a while ago, but the song was just recently released on Spotify which was the first I had heard about new music from Crack Cloud. The video is a pulsating, dizzying, collage of different stories of drug use and abuse woven together with varying perspectives of crippling loneliness and depression that can accompany living in a major city. In remembrance of those they’ve loved and lost to drug overdose and suicide, these storylines all meet up in an idyllic garden of eden of sorts in the end, giving hope that those who’ve left us are now resting in a better place.
–Lauren Khalfayan
“Moonstone” – Cones
The first time I watched Cones’ new music video “Moonstone,” I thought its animator was synesthetic (or, at least some sort of creative genius, which is absolutely true). Jonathan, the band’s singer and songwriter, graced my Youtube with this hand-drawn trippy animation – the visuals flowed so well with the song I proceeded to watch his other videos immediately after watching this one. It’s a difficult feat, to successfully create a music video where the video enhances the feeling of the song, and the song enhances the feeling of the video. This video does so, with its space-themed, multimedia, digital bursts of sound and color. The song itself is dreamy, saturated, and skillful –– fitting in with Cones’ retro and futuristic vibe –– and the animations playfully dance with the synths, piano, and guitar details of the psychedelic pop song. The visuals, obviously creative, are also notably abstract: a yellow moon turns into the side profile of a person singing the lyrics, Matisse-like flowers float in the windshield of an astronaut driving in space, and endless transmorphing shapes of oranges and yellows brighten my computer screen throughout the video. I’m already obsessed with Cones’ dreamy aesthetic, but when it’s pasted-together with hand-drawn planets and newspaper-feeling photos of the moon, I’m truly melting at my computer screen.
-Enne Goldstein