FRINGE MUSIC FIX's Weekly Top 5 (3/9)

Each week, FRINGE MUSIC FIX culls the latest music video releases, carefully selecting the most bizarre, provocative, and remarkable videos from across the world.

Sit back, relax, and open your minds eye - things are about to get interesting. The following are our selections for the week ending March 7th, 2014.

Swedish alternative pop artist Lykke Li has proven herself a multi-faceted singer songwriter whose music style ranges from uptempo energetic dance music to yearnful ballads. Both the video and song for "Love Me Like I'm Not Made Of Stone" are highly emotional and intimate glimpses into the soul of Lykke Li. The video consists of a single close up rotating shot of Lykke Li in a highly vulnerable state of emotion. It's a raw and melancholic video that incites feelings of isolation, longing, and empathy.

"Intoxicated" marks the third installment and continuation of the five part music video series directed by Ben Strebel for emerging R&B act Javeon, entitled "Mercy." This impressively directed, acted, and shot series features a unique and powerful story arc that's cinematic quality is on par with the presentation we'd expect from feature-length films. By intent, the video employs both a heightened sense of realism and surrealism serving to advance the plot and to provoke contemplation as the audience tries to interpret exactly what has happened and what will happen next. The series focuses on its central character, portrayed by Katy Sage, as she struggles with the inner turmoil and downward spiral of her life after a wedding gone bad. The remaining installments of "Mercy" are expected to be released before Summer, which will complete what is, in my humble opinion, one of the finest music video narrative arcs to have graced the format to date. If you arent yet following this series, I urge you to do so.

For their music video/short film, all-girl rock group Dum Dum Girls recruited acclaimed author and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis. Bret is probably best known for his novels American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction. The video was directed by BREWER (Passion Pits "Carried Away"). The video is a puzzling narrative, starring Dum Dum Girls' front woman Dee Dee, in what seems like a tale of forgotten identity. The video clocks in at a hefty 11 minutes, but thanks to its impressive atmosphere, engaging dialogue, and an excellent performance from Dee Dee, it never feels drawn out.

Emerging electro pop duo Broods' clip for "Never Gonna Change" features a male and female lead afflicted with perpetual flooding both in their surroundings and from themselves. The video features some unique and impressive visual effects that show characters and trees literally exploding with bursts of water. As water consumes all, we get the impression that the video could serve as a metaphor for something much grander.

I was born in 1980, so Ive been around long enough to know how the reference point for "retro" can change with time. Recently, references to the 90s are emerging as a retro influence that can incite powerful feelings of nostalgia in people who lived through this period. I disliked the 90s when living through it, but looking back at it through the vantage point of modern culture, I have begun to grow an appreciation for the campy, fun, colourful decade that it was. The past few years have seen the styles and music of the 90s revisited through covers, remakes and other forms of reimagining.

For Iggy Azalea's music video for "Fancy," someone was brilliant enough to envision how well suited the 90s, and more specifically, the 1995 cult comedy Clueless would be to the visual world of "Fancy." Through careful direction, fantastic attention to detail, great performances, precise casting, and even shooting in the same school as the original film, Director X has succeeded in crafting a playful tribute that stays truer to its original source than any music video video has in some time.