Midnight City by M83

What I wanted to title this: "Creepy kids with superpowers? Yeah, I'm down." But I'm trying to be professional so, you know, I stuck with what's up there.

I guess iTunes has really caught on to the M83 bandwagon as just a couple of weeks back, this was the Single of the Week. Now you can own both the music video and the single for absolutely nothing. Hooray! As you can probably imagine, as soon as I saw this on iTunes I hit the download button. M83 has really shined with their new album "Hurry Up We're Dreaming" and I cannot wait for their next single to come out (though I have already heard the whole album).  I'm keeping this one short, get this video, it's perfectly weird and since you are all in my music blogs class, you've already seen it. 

Enjoy my fellow music snobs!

The Only One by Joel Piper

This guy is pretty hard to track down on the internet. That's not to say he doesn't have his fair share of social networking sites, what I mean by this is that I looked far and wide for some bio information and couldn't find any. iTunes didn't even have anything (they usually have a biography link in the sidebar). 

This can mean 1 of 3 things:

1. He's still too "new" to have a wikipedia page. (Talk about underground)

2. He sucks so much that people haven't bothered writing about him.

3. FBI Agent (leaning towards this one).

"The Only One" is not only (pun intended) the title of Piper's 1st EP but also his first single on the album. I feel that my middle school self would have truly enjoyed this song. And by that I mean all the Justin Beiber fans are going to swoon over this guy excessively to the point of everyone else hating him. As you can imagine this guy is totally crazy about some chick and says so lyrically in the cheesiest way possible. The pop beats in the background can further establish his ethos as a Teen Heartthrob and emotionally unstable man-to-be. To conclude: this song is free for a reason. OOOHH, burn. Obviously not my cup of tea, but perhaps I'm only hating on him because his hair looks better than mine. 

Listen if you please.

Settle Down by Kimbra

Kimbra, I love you. This video is fantastic: I laughed, I cried in horror, I got super excited by their cute little dance moves but was secretly terrified the entire time I watched this video. Needless to say this video is already in my music library. 

Biggest reactions: 

2:24-- "WHAT THE FUCK?!" I literally yelled this one, my roommates were concerned. Mainly because I thought of this:

3:37--Oh, that's adorable they're doing the mashed potato...wait, those dolls are burning in the background. BRB, hyperventilating. 

The whole video is a giant statement on being the picture perfect housewife hinting the song title "Settle Down". The creepy part about it is that this housewife (who is actually a little girl) looks a lot like a porcelain doll and whenever Kimbra is lip syncing there are a shit ton of porcelain dolls behind her, and you kind of cringe every time you think about it. (Can you tell I don't like them?). The video later moves on to find out this girl's husband is cheating on her with another little girl who looks like a porcelain doll. It's very freaky and instead of fighting it out, they start dancing (50s style) with Kimbra in her little porcelain doll station. The video obviously has a 50s feel to it with the pearls, florals, and set design to further establish this need for housewife-ness. All in all, congratulations Kimbra, you have an excellent music video and the film student stamp of approval. 

Get this video, get it NOW.

P.S. If you like her on Facebook, you get a free track. I know this because of reasons. 

O Come O Come Emmanuel by the Civil Wars

Aww Yeahhh, Christmas season! It's only the most wonderful time of the year (I hope you just sung that last part). Anyway, in start of the season, iTunes' Single of the Week is a Christmas Song. The Civil Wars duo, most known for their songs "Poison & Wine" and "Barton Hollow" have adventured to the land that every other artist before them (including Beibs) has done their fair share of traveling to: a Christmas album. I'm going to say right now that very few successfully pull this off. It's not to say that they aren't good artists but most singers just cannot do Christmas music in my opinion. It usually just sounds bad, cheesy, and looks like an extremely obvious marketing technique. "O Come O Come Emmanuel" is one of the more difficult Christmas songs to pull off with it's slower pace and the fact that it's an actual hymn. Now, I am not opposed to the Civil Wars attempting to sing this, but I have heard better covers. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Civil Wars, I'm just not sure this song is really their forte. The best way I could describe my feelings involve hitting the snooze button. The song was too slow and didn't have much going for it. They needed to find something to make it their own and I'm not entirely sure they accomplished that.

Still in a Christmas Spirit? Still a die hard supporter of the Civil Wars? Have a Listen.

Heartbeat by The Fray

Woah, woah. Is this some Top 40 song/artist available for a free download on iTunes? Weird. Not  going to lie, this music video didn't catch my attention at all. The band is on some beach performing next to a cliche bonfire with a bunch of wanna be hipster girls who are holding sparklers. So yes, it very much lacks story development and plot. Hooray. But hey, if you love The Fray (which i kind of love the How to Save a Life album..but anyways) and aren't going to get tired of this song being overplayed in about 2 months, by all means go for it. Free is free.

Oh and yes, they do eventually run dramatically into the ocean. Ground breaking...truly. 

In Your Arms by Kina Grannis

2 words to describe this music video: How Cute! It totally reminded me of the intro to Juno (below) having the same color scheme, art direction, animation, and stop motion esthetic to it. 

The art direction was equally matched my the lyrics which were very much the girl version of "Here in Your Arms" by Hellogoodbye (yeah, remember that song?). I know I'm not the only one in love with this new music video as it has over 3 million views on youtube already. Kina Grannis has a very soothing voice and I will definitely be listening to more of her songs. Possibly my favorite part of this whole video is the fact that the animation is so unique (can you tell I strive to find individuality in music?). Who would have thought to make animation out of jelly beans? 228,000 of them to be exact. So fucking creative.

Anyway, go download this music video and love it...forever.

P.S. "All I Want is You" from the Juno Soundtrack could possibly be one of my favorite love songs of all time. Cheesy but totally heartwarming. 

This is totally not related to anything free on iTunes, but Sarai don't care.

Admit it...you laughed.
Ah the internet.