Music Videos

For a bunch of cynical bastards, we're having trouble finding anything to dislike whatsoever about Swedish indie maestros Loney Dear and, quite frankly, it's a rather discomforting sensation.

Or at least it would be, if listening to Loney Dear wasn't the breathtakingly joyous experience that it is. Perfectly tender melodic anthems sung with a voice humanly fragile enough to make Grant Mitchell drop to his knees and weep like a baby are Loney Dear's stock in trade, and that's never been truer than new single Saturday Waits. And if that's not enough, the video to Saturday Waits is another strong contender for video of the year, even managing to push the spellbinding video for the band's own I Am John into the shade. Fans of dogs dressed as human in pubs aren't going to be disappointed here.

Calvin Harris. He's got both love and hugs for you if you were born in the eighties - which includes at least some of the hecklerspray staff - but he's apparently got more love and hugs for you if you were born in the sixties and are called Kylie Minogue.

But maybe we'll have more luck with the new Calvin Harris song, Merrymaking At My Place. In Merrymaking At My House, Calvin Harris basically just lists all the things that he can do with his house over some stripped-back rigid funk. That's obviously going to enough for you watch the video of Merrymaking At My House by Calvin Harris - but if it isn't, rest assured that you'll be missing out on a video of Calvin Harris having a glamorous party with a flock of beautiful people round his Nan's house. While basically just listing all the things he can do with his house.  

As much as we like The Beastie Boys here - and, really, we do - we can't help wishing that they'd pull their bloody finger out a bit. It's been three years since the last Beastie Boys album was released - and nine since the last belter - and their new album, The Mix-Up, hasn't even got any vocals on it.

The Mix-Up has been widely touted as the first full-length, all-new, all-original instrumental Beastie Boys album which, as anyone who owns The In Sound From Way Out will know, is a mixed blessing. Although The Beastie Boys can bash out a superior 1970s copshow theme-tune at the drop of a hat, their instrumentals aren't a patch on tunes that they actually rap on - so what's The Mix-Up actually like? Well, based on the videos for Off The Grid and The Rat Cage, it's slightly interesting, fairly nondescript and vaguely over-long. But, hey, these Beastie Boys cuts from The Mix-Up are certainly worth a listen at the very least - and we can all count our lucky stars that The Mix-Up isn't Country Mike's Greatest Hits.

Watch The Beastie Boys Off The Grid video

Watch The Beastie Boys The Rat Cage video  

Mark Ronson. We liked him before you did, and now you like him we don't like him as much. And now comes what should be seen as Mark Ronson's lowest point - a cover version of a Kaiser Chiefs song that Lily Allen sings.

Oh My God, Mark Ronson's new single, is a cover of the once-ubiquitous Kaiser Chiefs tune with vocal duties performed by Lily Allen of one good song and being mean to Girls Aloud on the internet fame. Now, just by the sum of its parts, Oh My God by Mark Ronson should be terrible - but somehow, and we really aren't sure how - Mark Ronson manages to pull Oh My God up by its bootstraps until it's very slightly better than you expect it to be. And the video to Oh My God isn't too shoddy either; it reimagines Lily Allen as a sort of Jessica Rabbit figure. And it's sexy too, right up until Lily Allen cackles like a man at the end.

How many Scottish bands do you know who sound like The Killers? We've spent literally eight or nine seconds thinking about it, and we're stumped. So it's just as well that Drive By Argument are around to at least give us one example.

We don't know a lot about Drive By Argument, other than they're Scottish and sound like The Killers. Oh, and they've got a new single out on Monday called Sex Lines Are Expensive Comedy, although we'd argue that sex lines aren't actually comedy and that people only say that they're funny because they're secretly curious about what wanking off to a stranger's voice on the internet is like, and the comedy bit is just a handy excuse for when they're inevitably caught. Anyway, Sex Lines Are Expensive Comedy by Drive By Argument is good, in that it sounds like The Killers before they decided to go all dustbowl Springsteen on our arses. But make up your own minds.

alloy mental - god is green

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Being as terminally uncool as we are, we're not sure of the exact subgenre that Alloy Mental falls into - some would say it's Nu Rave, but we think it's more Nu Angry Dalek In An Air Raid Siren Factory, since that's more of an accurate description.

But since we're legally too old to be Da Kidz any more, our opinion on these matters is about as welcome as Prince Philip's. So here's what we know about Alloy Mental instead: 1) Alloy Mental are signed to Skint, home of Fatboy Slim and Goose. 2) All sorts of DJs are going crazy for Alloy Mental's effortless combination of raw punk energy and techno beats. 3) Judging by this video to God Is Green, Alloy Mental are capable of inspiring feverish devotion from crowds by repeating the words "God Is Green" again and again in a comedy Metal Mickey voice accompanied by a sot of aural ASBO. And you know what? God Is Green by Alloy Mental is actually pretty good. Tracey from Big Brother would probably call it "proper nuff banging" or something. But we're not total twats, so we won't do that. 

Jarvis Cocker, eh? If he isn't not writing any songs for Eurovision, then he's not not dressing up as Rolf Harris for episodes of Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes or not not not watching X Factor.

But what Jarvis Cocker is doing is recording songs like Fat Children. Fat Children, for those of you who haven't heard Jarvis Cocker's solo album is just nasty - a dirty, angry punk thrash of a song about being killed by a bunch of fat children and then coming back to haunt them and blaming the parents. Jarvis Cocker has managed to make Fat Children into a tune that's fist-pumpingly catchy and thoroughly depressing all at once. Don't believe us? Then watch the Fat Children video, recorded live at KOKO. And remember - if Fat Children teaches you anything, it's that if you see a kid in the street eating crisps you should punch them to the ground without a second's thought.

Watch the Jarvis Fat Children video now

In the past, music videos by The Horrors have featured bloodthirsty aliens splattering out of Samantha Morton's vagina - so obviously any subsequent videos that don't feature that are bound to be something of a letdown.

We're sad to inform you, in that case, that the video to The Horrors' new video She Is The New Thing doesn't feature any vagina-exploding aliens whatsoever. But, hey, if you like cartoon crows and animation that looks like blood, the She Is The New Thing video by The Horrors is exactly where it's at. Musically, She Is The New Thing is the sort of Screaming Lord Sutch lunacy we've all come to expect from The Horrors, albeit a version of Screaming Lord Sutch who makes videos of a cartoon monster crawling into a man's mouth and eating his heart from the inside until the man pukes the monster out and dies so that the monster can do a ballerina dance in his guts. 

Aside from that, though, exactly the same. 

We're reliably informed that Kevin Michael is setting the internet on fire at the moment. The reasons given for this web-based arson are based around Kevin Michael's "eclectic sound" and "soulful look," but that's all a lot of bum.

The reason for Kevin Michael setting the internet on fire is that the video to his new song Vicki Secrets is full of girls writhing around in their underwear. Stuffed with them, in fact. The video to Vicki Secrets by Kevin Michael has got enough models in underwear in it to actually cause some hormonal teenage boys to spontaneously combust on sight. And, since Kevin Michael himself is a weird-looking chap with a ridiculous afro, the message of the Vicki Secrets video is clear - if this goonish fool can surround himself with underwear models then so can you, you pasty underdeveloped 14-year-old.

What does the song Vicki Secrets sound like? There's a song? 

As Mike Tyson has proved, being the heavyweight champion of the world is a sweet job - not only do you get paid millions of quid to work for an hour a year but you get to threaten to rape every female journalist who tries to interview you.

But not everyone wants to go the Tyson way - if Reverend & The Makers were the heavyweight champions of the word they'd write a cheeky little indie disco song about 'leccy bills' sung in a sort of Arctic Monkeysish accent. No, wait, Reverend & The Makers have already written that song - and called it Heavyweight Champion Of The World - and released it and everything, and they're not even close to being heavyweight champions of the world. If you ask us, Reverend & The Makers need to walk it like they talk it and jump into the ring with Ruslan Chagaev before they start making proclamations like that.

Oh, and Reverend & The Makers are playing Fopp in Tottenham Court Road on Saturday, but you need to get a wristband from the shop at midday or else you can't go.

Watch the Reverend & The Makers Heavyweight Champion Of The World video now 

There are two main things separating the first Maximo Park album from Our Earthly Pleasures, Maximo Park's newest album.

Firstly, their debut saw the Maximo Park singer cover up what we suspect to be a nasty case of male pattern baldness with a weird Adolf Hitler haircut, whereas for Our Earthly Pleasures he's wisely decided to employ a hat. Secondly, Our Earthly Pleasures is basically the sound of Maximo Park screaming "MAKE US FAMOUS IN AMERICA" a million times louder than on A Certain Trigger. This new attitude can be seen on songs like new single Books From Boxes. Books From Boxes is the sort of mid-tempo semi-anthem that only exist to try and convince people that the person who wrote it is clever and deep and emotionally mature. Sadly, we're none of these things, so we're not that fond of Books From Boxes - a fact that Maximo Park have already noticed and will try to remedy on their next album, the tentatively-titled Barry Done A Big Guff In The Shop And Some Went Up My Nose And I Cried - but here's the Books From Boxes video for you to make up your own mind, anyway.

Holiday

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Since Monday is a bank holiday - and thus without hecklerspray, here's a video by The Ripps for a song called Holiday. Because Monday is a holiday and the song is called Holiday. Clever huh? Anyone?

Anyway, Holiday is the new single from Long Live The Ripps, the gloriously trashy debut album by Coventry/Chile scoundrels The Ripps. Holiday isn't really the best song that The Ripps are ever going to release - it's a painfully dated Britpop song about drinking a cheeky pint in Wetherspoons - but it is called Holiday, and Monday is a bank holiday, so we're sticking up here because we're too lazy to think of anything wittier than posting a song called Holiday on a holiday. Just count yourselves lucky that bank holidays aren't called Razorlight days, or else we'd all be in trouble.