Brains For the sweeping drama and layers of quivering sounds in “Brains,” the first single off the forthcoming album Nootropics, Lower Dens released a music video that is rather minimalist. Well, minimalist at least in narrative action. The entire video focuses on a seated Jana Hunter, as seen through a convex screen resembling that...
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Eject Rock bands still make videos, it turns out, and we’re happy to see this one for several reasons. First, it’s a video for our favorite song from Baltimore cave-prog trio Dope Body‘s 2011 album, Nupping. Second, it was created by the folks behind Showbeast, the uncategorizable Baltimore-based video/puppetry pigpile (of which City Paper...
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Pretty swirly and stuff For his new album, Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads–out Feb. 21 on Thrill Jockey–Dustin Wong has released a music video and started a contest. First, let’s get to the video, for the song “Diagonally Talking Echo.” The layers of swirling guitars we’ve come to love in Wong’s music are...
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Irony Bosley, a young white hipster soul singer-slash-persona from Baltimore, tried to raise $20,000 on Kickstarter for this video, in which said performer walks around shooting people on Old Town Mall indiscriminately. It’s supposed to be a metaphor, I guess, though as far as metaphors go–and most anything else, for that matter–it has all the...
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Reina Williams, from Facebook Though we picked her as the city’s best solo artist in last year’s Best of Baltimore awards, singer/songwriter/rapper/producer/guitarist Reina Williams is the kind of uncategorizable musical talent that you tend not to see on reality TV talent shows like American Idol. But Simon Cowell’s latest show, the U.S. edition of...
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Riding the rides A roller coaster ride would be a temptingly lazy metaphor to describe either the soft-loud dynamics of Wye Oak’s songs or the runaway success the Baltimore duo’s third full-length Civilian has enjoyed since its release in March. But the new video for “Holy Holy,” directed by Jeremy Johnstone, features the members...
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"Beach" The plot of the music video for the new Future Islands song, “Balance,” is fairly simple: two love-struck kids thumb rides with little more than a sign that reads “Beach.” But in the same way, say, the Smashing Pumpkins’ video for “1979” was able to capture the doldrums of being a teenager in...
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By Josh Sisk This Thursday marks the third anniversary of the death of Baltimore club DJ and local radio icon Khia “Club Queen K-Swift” Edgerton, a tragic loss to the city’s music scene that hasn’t gotten any less heartbreaking or difficult to accept in the time since then. Countless tribute songs popped up in...
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Ellis A promising up-and-coming Baltimore rapper named Ellis, who released his first mixtape barely more than a year ago, has been getting some well-deserved buzz on bigger out-of-town hip-hop sites like Rap Radar and kevinnottingham.com with his video for the songs “Bmore Boys” and “Oh Lord,” both off of his recent album, Bluray E....
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Hilvarenbeek: Totally, Totally Broke and Beautiful Just in case you thought hanging out with Francis Ford Coppola had turned Dan Deacon irreparably fancy, IFC.com premiered Hilvarenbeek, an absolutely insane short film directed by Deacon’s pal Jimmy Joe Roche and scored by Deacon. Hilvarenbeek starts out in a church with a hipster chorus humming, led...
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Video still Baltimore filmmaker Hilton Carter directed the music video for DJ Quik’s “Luv of My Life,” the first single from the Los Angeles legend’s new album Book of David. The video has all the things you’d expect from a Quik video (weed, strippers, elastic sports headbands) but the video’s narrative rather goofily kicks-off...
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Not down with the DMV The Black Sunn and 810 are two young Baltimore rappers that have been making increasingly great music and building a small amount of blog buzz over the past couple years, often guesting on each other’s solo records. And now they’re finally collaborating on a full length album as a...
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Not a real tattoo “I’m not cool; I’m not badass. It’s an intimidating thing to try and do,” says Jenn Wasner, prefacing Wye Oak’s cover of Danzig’s “Mother,” done recently for the Onion A/V Club’s Undercover cover song series (making them the only band invited back a second time). It winds up fitting the...
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The villian Cinematic ambitions and movie homages are nothing new for hip-hop videos. And Skarr Akbar’s “Jackpot” isn’t even the first rap vid to take its inspiration from Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight. But while the Baltimore rapper’s 6-minute “mini-movie” for the single off of last year’s The Pursuit...
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Midas Mania Music Group’s Midas (now going by the name DDM) has a hip-hop and club fusion record called American Graffiti coming out soon on Unruly Records. The project was first mentioned in City Paper a few weeks ago in a profile of Unruly borders-breaker Schwarz (he has a beat on the album) and,...
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Time to get bent When City Paper spoke to local rapper Born King last summer about his unique approach to hip-hop and prolific off-the-radar output, the offbeat MC spoke about slowing down from his pace of two albums a year and focusing on mentoring younger collaborators like his brother, producer Singodsuperior. And while he’s...
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"Off My Mind" Erstwhile For the People Entertainment rapper Billo has been steadily dropping videos for the past few months, at least four off of last August’s mixtape Falling Off Into 1st, and the latest is for “Off My Mind.” The song, featuring a melodic hook from WillStar and a light, elegant beat that’s...
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"Whore of Baltimore" Enjoy this new song/video from Baltimore’s Bethany Dinsick, making lovely out-folk ambience equal parts song and ritual: slow, falling-off guitar strums; honeyed, burrowing vocals; and background texture courtesy of an MRI machine (according to the video’s notes). Also: more, more, MORE triangles.  It seems like Disnick doesn’t appear out all that...
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Kitties The band Ponytail isn’t dead. The beachy, squealy art-punk force-of-nature even has another album coming out, a long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s Ice Cream Spiritual, this April, Do Whatever You Want All the Time. Dig this teaser video, an ecstatic barf of found footage, reappropriated pop imagery, and kitties. Be more excited about the...
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Party Animal Shark Tank is a new hip-hop kinda-supergroup that’s releasing its debut album this month and playing a release party at the Windup Space on Friday. It features Height and Mickey Free, two old friends who’ve turned a decade-long collaboration into a whole constellation of offbeat local hip-hop artists that band together every...
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