Welcome back to our yearly exploration of the best underground and lesser-known music videos of the year. If it got less than a million plays on YouTube, it was eligible for consideration. Let’s dive back in.
40. Real Estate, Water Underground”
Creepy suburbia always makes for a good music video, but whether “Water Underground” is a horror story or just plain weird is something you’ll have to decide. The band drives through the idyllic town of Wellsville, slowly being overtaken by the blond, bland, middle-class Republicanism of the place. Then they start running people over. Like I said, weird. I would appreciate it if someone else would watch it a few times then try to explain it to me in the comments.
39. Skid Row, “Resurrected”
Full disclosure, Skid Row was my favorite hair metal act growing up, and that bias is probably part of the reason they made the list this year. There is something so wonderfully enjoyable about watching a band from the 1980s fight a crappy CGI demon that looks like it walked right out of a PlayStation 2 game. The song is amazing, easily the equal of some of their classics like “Youth Gone Wild,” and new singer Erik Grönwall fits in like a glove. The whole affair is hokey, but sincere, and that makes it pretty cool.
38. Chika feat. Freddie Gibbs, “Truth or Dare”
Chika has put out reliably solid videos, including this year’s “Demigod.” “Truth or Dare” has the more epic feel, though. Part of it is the pyramid Freddie Gibss raps in when he gets his turn, but it’s more that Chika just has an ever-grander presence this go ‘round.
37. Imminence, “Come Hell or High Water”
You know a video is going to be good when it opens with someone running across the frame on fire. Imminence and director Pavel Trebukhin have crafted a pagan mini-rock opera about druids and the end of the world. It moves at a snail’s pace, but the soaring tune and stunning visuals keeps you guessing what’s going to happen right up until the end.
36. The Plot in You, “Forgotten”
If you took every possible societal trauma from war to drug addiction and put it in a blender, “Forgotten” would be the result. It’s a literal cornucopia of horrors helmed by director George Gallardo Kattah. Kattah was very, very busy this year, and at least three of his videos ended up on this list. “Forgotten” is by far his loudest work and is an apt accompaniment to The Plot in You’s high-octane song.
35. Return to Dust, “When You Look at Me”
Ah, the nostalgia cycle has finally reached grunge. In this short film directed by Matty Akana, a little boy has to deal with his abusive, shitty dad in a squalid little house while Return to Dust rocks out in the living room. It’s gross, dismal, washed out, grimy, and an immediate hit of dopamine thanks to the mental time travel back to the days MTV.
34. Elita, “She Bangs Like a Fairy on Acid”
How far can you get with a few TikTok filters in the music video game? Well, if you’re Elita, pretty goddamn far. Her trippy ode to fairies in the forest shifts back and forth from real to computer generated plastic magic in a hallucinatory haze. It shouldn’t work this well, but it absolutely does.
33. Leatherette, “Thin Ice”
If you’re one of those people who thinks the Muppets are just one bad day away from being ball-retractingly terrifying, then you’ll love “Thin Ice.” Leatherette is stalked by a nightmarish version of Cookie Monster (played by Lorenzo Cavicchioli and Alberto Zussa), who tortures them before ultimately rebelling against his own existence as a puppet. It’s a potent mix of surreal and silly that manages to be both unsettling and uplifting.
32. Jhariah, “Risk, Risk, Risk!”
This video directed by William White and Jhariah himself is like a rollercoaster for the eyes and ears. It drags Jhariah through a series of higH-risk moments, almost like a personal dark ride. Or it would be if it wasn’t splashed with more color than a Splatoon game. Fun, energetic, and unforgettable.
31. The Great Kat, “Beethoven’s Funeral March Symphony No. 7”
Every year, super shredder The Great Kat releases a steady stream of guitar screeches, some reworks of classics and some originals. All of them look like they are shot from inside a kaleidoscope that is also an insane asylum. The best of these in 2023 was her take on the “Allegretto” from Beethoven’s seventh symphony, which Kat fires out in her trademark style surrounded by gravestones. This bit of hers never gets old, and I look forward to mainlining her output to pick one winner every single December. God bless you, Kat, you frothing, wonderful lunatic. See you next Christmas.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
