Today's Pick

And you thought your last breakup was tough? Lykke Li took her last breakup really, really badly. On the song "Gunshot," she compares a failed relationship to a bullet going through her head; for the track's brand-new music video, the Swedish singer dons some ghostly makeup and performs a parking lot mourning parade that ends with her face-down in the concrete, convulsing from imaginary gunshot wounds. The clip features some of the singer's most savage sentiments to date, and it is a stark and striking thing, and might be her most depressing music video ever.
Taken from her third album "I Never Learn," an onslaught of emotion about the ups and downs of twentysomething womanhood, this Greg Kurstin-produced searching power breakup ballad "Gunshot" finds an anguished Li longing to get her lover back. Speaking with NME, the Swedish songstress explained how the ending of a relationship had a major impact on the writing of her "I Never Learn" album. "I wrote 'Gunshot' straight after a meditation I had and the words just came out kind of violent words. So this is also the moment in, in a relationship where you've fucked up and some things you can never take back," Li says of the song. "I think that a lot of people can relate to that moment where it's just gone forever."
The 28-year-old Swedish singer has always been an artist's artist, establishing herself as more than a mere musician but an actual slave to some muse who only allows her to be creatively fueled at its whim. She has a reputation for being temperamental and difficult, but always those things in slavish devotion to best actualizing her art. In her latest music video for "Gunshot," Li finally lets her artistic side take over the visuals she creates. For the first time she is giving us a piece of performance art not based in any realistic depiction of the song or her actual persona.
Filmed in Paris and directed by Parisian duo Fleur and Manu, the clip finds Li in the middle of an urban wasteland. she looks like a wraith, with corpsepaint makeup and an ill-fitting trench coat, and she dances expressively across a burnt-out apocalyptic parking lot. There seems to be some kind of shantytown there, and she encounters colorful characters - bloodthirsty little kids, girls who seem to twerk compulsively, dirtbike trick riders - without seeming to notice any of them. Maybe the video is some kind of extended heartbreak metaphor, and maybe it all just looks cool. Either way, you can watch it below.

Those of you who like to abscond into depressing films like "Blue Valentine" are in for a treat. Swedish singer-songwriter Lykke Li returned with a story of intimacy and separation with the depressing video to her chest-thumping new single, "No Rest For The Wicked" the second single taken from her upcoming third studio album, "I Never Learn," due out May 6th via Atlantic. It is a beautifully shot film evokes the harsh emotional turmoil of a breakup and the subject matter of the new album, which Li wrote after a breakup.
Following on from the critically acclaimed album "Wounded Rhymes" in 2011, the 28-year-old songstress continues her strong push towards her "I Never Learn," the third part in a trilogy of her albums, which is full of big emotional ballads, and one of the biggest and most emotional is "No Rest For The Wicked." It follows "Love Me Like I'm Not Made Of Stone," revealed earlier this year. The first song we heard cut through with its aching minimalism, just a bleached voice and husky guitar. Now she follows up with the orchestral "No Rest For The Wicked."
Speaking about the song, the singer commented: "'No Rest For The Wicked' is the second song I wrote for 'I Never Learn.' I wrote it in Sweden when I was packing up my shit, and I'd just gotten out of a relationship and it was a horrible time. I just had the hurt, shame, sadness, guilt, longing. The vocal track, the take, is the demo. In the verse, I'm referring to myself pleading guilty but I'm referring to all of us." The song is a heart-wrenching tale of lost love. The video portrays Li's lyrics through its beautifully shot depiction of intimacy and separation, accompanied by the raw vocals and emotional harmonies.
Director Tarik Saleh is able to match the song's emotional weight through a story of two lovers torn apart due to external factors, as "No Rest for the Wicked" video pits Li amidst an interracial love affair, in which her seafaring lover comes and goes like the wind. There's a vintage wash over the three-and-a-half minute clip that recalls a director like Valentine's Derek Cianfrance, and a sense of isolation that rings true to the song's lyrical visuals. Sad music and interracial love surrounded by jerky-sustained hatred... you can see where this is going. Watch the drama unfold below.

Swedish electro songstress Lykke Li has put out a stylish new video for her gorgeous centerpiece ballad new track "Sadness Is A Blessing," is one of the best tracks featured on her latest fantastic sophomore record "Wounded Rhymes." The video, a state that perfectly suits a song saturated in misery, is featuring legendary Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård and directed by Tarik Saleh, the same one behind Li's "I Follow Rivers" clip, Li herself puts in a great performance as a young woman in self-destruct/act-out mode.
Li's girl-group influences are most obvious on "Wounded Rhymes," which peaks with "Sadness is a Blessing." This track itself is a gorgeously intense and deep look at love, with brooding drums and heartbreaking vocals. Despite its lyrics ("sadness is my boyfriend, oh sadness I'm your girl"), the chorus to "Sadness is a Blessing" recalls the exuberance of The Ronettes's "(The Best Part of) Breakin' Up." True to the girl-group genre, sorrow is delivered as triumphantly as joy.
Li fled her native Sweden and moved to LA where she trained to be an actor. The 25-year-old is sexy in that strong-willed-but-still-cute-and-innocent way. If you watch any of her live performances, you'll notice she has the on-stage presence of a big, male rapper dude rather than a small, Swedish girl. In her music, she reveals every aspect of her personality: her romantic passion, her lust, her broken heart, her strength, her fury. And when you look at those big, brown eyes, it's like you can see all of that at once too; and that's sexy. The new video is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, is one of her most emotionally bare, and she really bares her emotions all over this video.
It's a brooding affair, all simmering tension, vodka shots and improvised dance moves. The video sees Li having a disruptive dinner affair with her boyfriend, before she breaks into a dance making the other restaurant punters feel a little uneasy. It opens with nearly two minutes of Li getting hammered in front of a quiet, uncomfortable restaurant crowd, and it's an emotional rollercoaster that ends up with Li dancing around, much to the embarrassment of onlookers. She expresses so much through those wild dance moves while people look on or try and stop her. It all seems really personal, like you feel guilty for watching it. But, she wants you to. Based in a Rolling Stone article that Li's been told by three different psychics that she was born with a broken heart. This song kind of makes a lot of sense after hearing that. This is one of her best videos yet.