Mandy Brown

Father John Misty' aka Josh Tillman's tale of an awful romantic tryst gets a video that'd be more fitting for an ode to self-love, which maybe is indeed what this song is actually all about. Literally, kind of.

5 Seconds Of Summer reinforce their stronghold on that sweetspot between pop/punk and boy band thanks to this cartoonish tale about rallying all the underdogs for a parade that would make Delta Tau Chi proud.

Isaac Rentz, director: "This is my 4th video for the band. They're always fun to work with because they have a great sense of humor but they also take the message behind their videos seriously. The band wanted to make something with a revolutionary theme that showed them sticking up for underdogs. I worked with my production designer to create a mad max-style vehicle that they would drive through the suburbs, made completely from scraps that you'd find in a neighborhood garage. It was an intense night shoot, with hundreds of extras on the Warner Brothers studio lot. I was nervous about it all coming together, but I remember the first moment we saw the band rounding the corner on that big smoking, blinking vehicle, we all knew we had found the right visual to match the song."'​

Even the simplest situation can be made awfully complicated. Director Saman Kesh enlists narrator Bret Easton Ellis to solve yet another mystery for Placebo. This time we have projectile vomit, a slaphappy creep, a rash and a possibly spiked blue drink.

And, we also have some NSFW elements, so you might want to study this like a Zapruder Film in the comfort of your own home.

PS: There's a quiz at the end. Good luck.

Some couples meet at the rock show and soar easily into the atmosphere, carried by the elation of love. Others have to overcome greater forces, as is the case with the stars in this dreamy and gravity-defying Basic Vacation video.

Placebo "Too Many Friends" is one of those great videos that can be easily summed-up in a couple bullet-points to a newbie — it's narrated by author Bret Easton Ellis and ends with a quiz — but also stands up to repeated viewings and close studies. The video is a mystery, but also a critique about how we've been lulled into submission by our digital devices and the well-chose pharmaceutical.

We recently chatted with director Saman Kesh via email about how the video came together, the irony of it all, and what it means — including how the video is slyly, if a bit coincidentally connected to The Dark Knight Rises.