FRINGE MUSIC FIX’s selections for the week’s most exceptional music videos include themes of warmth, sunshine, vampires, glamour shots, murder and the afterlife. I’ll also discuss some of the very exciting and innovative interactive music videos that were released this week.

Jake Schreier, the man responsible for 2012’s sleeper hit film, Robot & Frank, once again teams up with Francis And The Lights for the well executed music video for “Like A Dream.” The track and video are both the perfect ailment for these increasingly cool Fall days. The video consists of a single impressive long shot of Francis and the Lights frontman Francis Farewell Starlight dancing across a vast field as the camera follows along, all the while capturing the sun’s glowing rays. A simple and effective conceptual video that stood out for me in a week full of very complex interactive videos.

Baby Alpaca’s warm and effectively washed out video for "Wild Child" takes place in the desert, with Baby Alpaca wandering the vast terrain, seemingly in search of the "Wild Child." He soon meets a beautiful woman, who’s likely "Wild Child," who as it stands, may possess some mysterious abilities that you may expect a ‘Wild Child’ to possess.

Stoner rock group Queens of the Stone Age released one of this year’s greatest albums with ...Like Clockwork in June. Upon its release, they dropped a very impressive set of animated music videos directed by Boneface which told an epic post-apocalyptic tale in three parts. This time, they’ve opted to release an interactive music video and a non-interactive accompaniment that, while equally dark, are definitely much eerier than their predecessors. While the interactive video fails in both its execution and concept, the standard video is an unforgettable one directed by Kii Arens and Jason Trucco. Originally slated for an October release, we can easily see how this video would have made a great Halloween video. The creepy setting of taxidermied animals and QotsA frontman Josh Homme’s long-ass finger nails may be ominous and unsettling, but these definitely can’t compare to the frightening vampire-like elderly female co-star of Homme , who clearly steals the creep show.

As far as videos that treat themes of fashion and horror, Wampire’s music video for "The Hearse" is definitely a good followup to Queens of the Stone Age’s "The Vampyre of Time and Memory." Raphaël Pfeiffer directs this heavily 80s influenced video that tells the darkly funny tale of a glamour shoot gone wrong - horrendously wrong. The video is just as nostalgia-inducing as Wampire’s unique retro blend of indie rock, and as one of the biggest 80s geeks and enthusiasts alive, that’s not something I can easily ignore.

Emily Kai Bock has rapidly become one of my favourite music video directors. Her very prolific body of work has been growing significantly since her most memorable work for Grimes’ “Oblivion” video. Since then, she has directed phenomenal videos for artists such as Doldrums, Majical Cloudz, Grizzly Bear, Solange, Haerts, and more. On this outing, Emily Kai Bock joins fellow Canadians and hugely popular act, Arcade Fire, for the remarkable music video for "Afterlife." While Kai Bock can pull of both non-narrative and narrative videos with style and finesse, this one opts for a more narrative approach, and a wonderfully poignant one at that. “Afterlife” tells the moving story of a father raising two sons alone after the passing of his wife. What sets this narrative apart is that many of the details of the wife and mother figure are revealed through the dreamscapes of our antagonists as they sleep. I’d like to think the video may suggest that the "Afterlife," if nothing else, is the way in which we live on through the memories of our loved ones after we depart.

Interactive Music Videos

As testament to what I like to refer to as the “re-birth of the music video," we received not one, but two amazing interactive music videos this week that I feel further the increasing popularity of music videos as a form of art and promotion. While I feel these are both amazing multimedia pieces that I certainly consider some of this week’s best material, I felt they deserved to be segregated in that they are most certainly not “music videos” as we’ve come to know them, but something far different and groundbreaking.

While it’s obvious that Dylan’s "Like a Rolling Stone" doesn’t require a music video to gain recognition, this wonderful interactive experience was one of the most successful and popular interactive videos to date. Perhaps it’s the timeless and genre transcendent popularity of the song, or perhaps it’s just all weighted on the video’s innovative concept. The video is basically a pseudo cable/satellite TV broadcast in which the user has the ability to change channels, all of which have been taken over by Bob Dylan’s "Like a Rolling Stone." Throughout the programming, Popular Television programs like Pawn Stars and the Price Is Right see the actors lip syncing the vocals to the track. What’s great about the experience is the self-proclaimed randomness in each viewing and the inherit replay value that this provides.

Just when we thought we’d seen an interactive music video to top them all, Pharrell dropped this wonderful 24 hour long music video for “Happy” from the soundtrack for Despicable Me 2. In this video, which is in fact 24 hours long, we bare witness to a huge cast of celebrities and performers dancing or sometimes just reacting to the very infectious “Happy”. Sometimes the dancing is fantastic, and sometimes terrible, but the constant is that it’s always done with relentless joy. This is definitely something I can stand behind, as my love of dancing is rivaled only by how terrible it in fact is. What makes the video interactive is in our ability to fast forward and toggle through the video and subsequently share moments to our social network profiles. While few brave souls will lay claim to watching this entire video in full, “Happy," not unlike “Like a Rolling Stone," is a unique brand of music video that encourages and even demands repeated and extended viewings.

Honourable Mentions

Claire - Broken Promise Land

Connan Mockasin - I’m The Man, That Will Find You

Cuushe - Lost My Way

Flume - Drop The Game (Ft. Chet Faker)

Galantais - Smile

Life & Limb - Carry On

Naomi Pilgrim - No Gun

Sleepy Sun - The Lane

Young Galaxy - Crying My Heart Out