Today's Pick

Taylor Swift has unveiled a melancholy new video on MTV last night for her melancholy acoustic ballad new song "Safe & Sound," featuring country/folk duo The Civil Wars, and the lead promotional single, from the soundtrack of the upcoming movie adaptation of "The Hunger Games." The film is set in a post-apocalyptic world where teenage boys and girls fight to the death in an annual televised event and is based on Suzanne Collins' young-adult novel of the same title, arrives in theaters on March 23.
The 22-year-old not only won two Grammy awards, both for "Mean," Sunday night, but she also performed her single "Mean" flawlessly. "Safe & Sound" certainly captures the tone of The Hunger Games, which will be filled with the sort of dread that only an uninviting stretch of woods can provide. It's a relief that Swift didn't take the "Mean" route and equate being hunted for the bloodlust of a ruling class to being picked on by internet trolls. Their spare, haunting tune is the kind of song that demands a video full of fireside glow and American Gothic overtones.
Luckily, that's exactly what the clip is - with glum vibes, and seems to have a stark, gloomy, and pensive feel, is an obvious reflection of the 'Hunger Games' setting and plot, which finds adolescents being used as pawns in a sick and twisted battle to the death. It features the country-singing cutie walking through a deserted desolate forest and singing the track, while the clip also shows a split second of The Civil Wars' John Paul White and Joy Williams strumming instruments with the duo being illuminated in a fiery red light from a fire playing on their faces.
The video shows Swift looking very natural with her hair down and not overly styled, looks a bit lost as she wanders a gorgeously-rendered wasteland full of spooky abandoned wells and ungulates who turn to ash through the barren winter woods, Swift looks almost hesitant, walking among leafless brown trees and crunched leaves. She's wearing a cream-colored lace dress without makeup and donning a flowy white gown that makes her look like she's from another time, and it's beautiful yet strikingly simple. She almost looks like a deserted angel in search of a loved one or some sign of life.

LIGHTS rolls out her brand new music video for the song "Banner," serves as the second official single from Canadian singer's latest sophomore effort, "Siberia," which has a strong dubstep influence, while also wandering into genres of dream pop, minimal, dance and even noise, is nominated for "Pop Album of the Year" at this year's JUNO Awards. The event airs April 1st on CTV.
"Siberia" sees synth pop superstar venture into new directions as being slightly grittier in a musical sense than the previous, The Listening, but retaining the charm and innocence of the previous album and EP. The girl who I saw bring her synth-pop from the bedroom to the stage with music to light up faces and hearts. For an artist that can be considered a poster-girl for being 'self-made,' it's hard to argue against the artistic progression and her own right for creative exploration and development.
Directed and conceptualized by Sean Michael Turrell, the clip was shot from dawn till dusk over the course of one day in the desert about an hour outside of Los Angeles. The video's mood places LIGHTS in a Road Warrior-inspired post-apocalyptic world, and features the 24-year-old Canadian pop princess walking down alone the long empty road in a deserted dessert, was based on the film "The Book of Eli," until she runs into a group of other young brave hitchhikers.
As she travels through a vast desert and encounters a pick-up truck of dirty-faced young vagabonds who invite her to join them. They continue down a lonely highway, and everything almost goes smoothly until hitting a roadblock where a bunch of pirate-wannabes stop them and start attacking. All LIGHTS had to do though is to raise a white flag - a banner, if you will - and everything's good. The setting is pretty interesting and beautiful and if you haven't already be sure to give her album a listen.

Whitney Houston, who reigned as pop music's queen and the golden girl of the music industry in the '80s and '90s who wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen, but suffered from recurring bouts with drugs and alcohol, was found dead early Saturday evening in a Beverly Hills hotel room, as the industry gathered in Los Angeles for the official Pre-Grammy Gala hosted by her mentor Clive Davis, chief creative officer of Sony Music Worldwide.
Began her career just as the video age was just starting to blossom, and she scored some of her greatest success in that medium. With her incredible vocal range and purity, runway good looks and girl-next-door charm, Whitney was an unstoppable force in pop music, and an out-of-the-box superstar when she arrived on the music scene in 1985. Her meteoric rise included record-setting hits, groundbreaking videos and a promising film career.
Whitney's downfall was so long and sad that, in an impatient public's mind, it overshadowed her many accomplishments. Those achievements can be checked off easily in numbers - Grammy Awards, records sold, the string of seven consecutive No.1 singles. Yet if there's any solace to her passing, it is that people will revisit recordings, videos and films to rediscover the majesty of her work. Tonight, the 54th Annual Grammy Awards will sure sending off tributes to Whitney, the winner for the Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.
I just wanted to pick one of her successful hits to pay my tribute to Whitney. "My Love Is Your Love," is her gorgeous reggae-tinged title track from her 1998 favorite Soul/R&B album, a schizophrenic album with a primer on today's hip-hop/R&B scene: the good, the bad, and the Fugee. The mid-tempo tune draws strong influence from reggae genres, and was lauded by critics. It showcase Whitney in all her creative, soulful maturity. The track was a massive hit worldwide, becoming Whitney's third most successful single, after "I Will Always Love You," and "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)." You will always be missed, Whitney!

Morning Parade released a new video for their first proper single "Us & Ourselves," from the UK indie rock outfit's upcoming début LP is due out June 19. What do you get when you meld together the ebb and flow of 90's dance anthems with the crunch and tingle of indie rock? You get the soaring and catchy sounds from this five piece band and it is another fine example of Britain's love for indie rock.
"Us & Ourselves," is a song filled with great drumming accompanied with the riffs and synths that have gotten them the fan-base. With added backing vocals the song gets more depth. The lyrics are sung with such heart and soul, and the song proves the hype right down to the final beat. It's one of those songs that dominates with its ability to gradually build in sound and persistence, creating some killer musical progressions along the way.
"Try your best to feel something," the lead vocals Steve Sparrow sings on "Us And Ourselves," which shouldn't be too hard while you're listening to his band's epic new anthem. Sparrow sings with a raw edge that separates him from both bands, while the group's diverse sound and it should win them plenty of international ears. Don't be surprised if you feel like you're soaring by the 3 minute mark, but no need to worry - they'll bring you back to solid ground by song's end, leaving you with a soft landing and warm memories.
The dark new video is an expressive pairing of a song about loss with dark footage of wandering people with psychic power and pyrotechnics that makes you wonder if you've ever felt this way "running around the streets where you grew up." The clip is as intense as the music, full of sci-fi special effects as the band plays in another shot, a motley crew of villagers wanders down a country road to follow a mysterious light, which sucks up a car, sets a cabin on fire and blasts our newfound friends into space. They wind up chilling with the constellations, which is probably better than spontaneously combusting.

Jay-Z and Kanye West performing together again for their mind-blowing show in a newly-released video for their hit “Niggas In Paris,” the third track from their collaboration album "Watch The Throne," in which everything the superstar duo rap about is what they actually go through. Followed the release of "Otis" last year, this part live clip, part kaleidoscopic freakout, the "Paris" video more than matches the song's massive impact.
West steals the show on the Hit-Boy produced club anthem, which incorporates staccato orchestration, fizzing industrial noise, a sampling of dialogue from the Will Ferrell/Jon Heder ice-skating comedy film "Blades of Glory." The dynamic rap duo breathed new life into their inescapable hit, and their lyrics frame their rags to riches story on the song. In an interview, West revealed that the song was inspired by his travels in Paris. Both rappers come in hard over a slow, menacing beat and icy synthesizer notes.
The dark, apocalyptic clip, directed by West himself, is taken from a run of live shows at Los Angeles' Staples Center with shots of the pair performing mixed with crowd footage, giving fans who couldn't score tickets to the sold-out 'Watch the Throne Tour' the chance to experience what it was like - if they had been on psychedelic drugs at the time. Appropriately, the video opens with a warning that its special effects could lead to epileptic seizures. The two rap icons merge and are pulled apart in a kaleidoscope of quick cuts.
Given the size and scope of both the song and the artists performing it, the "Paris" video, spliced with some dynamic imagery and even a slightly reworked beat, is also largely compromised and loaded with lasers, prowling panthers, pop-up-book cityscapes and the aforementioned models. Shoot, even producer Hit-Boy makes a one-second cameo. It's a head-spinning, pulse-quickening mixture of imagery and movement, of sight and sound - an experience unlike any other live clip. If you caught the Throne tour, the "Paris" video is sure to inspire heady flashbacks.

While many of us were playing catchup on our Monday post-Super Bowl sleep, The Black Keys have unveiled a new heavily-filtered video for “Gold on the Ceiling,” the second single taken from their most recent outstanding record, "El Camino," released in last December. The Black Keys ditched their usual humorous in favor of more conventional rock-star fare.
The blues-rock duo follow their buzz-worthy video for the first single "Lonely Boy" with a characteristically no-frills depiction of their new single "Gold on the Ceiling." The Singer and guitarist Dan Auerbach told American Songwriter magazine that he roped in three "local girls" to sing the gospel harmonies on this track about the illusionary nature of material success. Again bucking the norm of production grandiosity, the video takes a fittingly low-budge angle: intertwining studio footage with clips of the band behind-the-scenes and performing on stage.
Directed by Reid Long, the clip has no shortage of head-bopping footage which documents the Akron rockers performing at their album release party at Webster Hall in Manhattan, and then rocking out in a Los Angeles studio space. The clip includes plenty of mundane behind-the-scenes moments, and their hundreds of fans at the venue, courtesy of the squelchy, fuzzy garage rock the band excels at. There's even a cameo from the now-infamous wood-panelled van!
The new Video shows duo in their natural element, and details your standard road video rockisms. The two-man band has been rolling out the tunes and rolling in the accreditation. Whereas their other videos succeeded by contrasting The Black Keys' straight-ahead blues-rock with quirky viral fodder, this video fits them like a glove. It looks like it was more a product of necessity, given the whirlwind schedule that comes along with being one of rock's biggest bands, a status the duo are still getting used to. "It's been absolutely insane and everyday something weirder happens," Auerbach told MTV.

With one pop album under her belt, Jessie James is hoping to break through in the genre where her heart always was, country music. The 23-year-old has just dropped a new video on CMT for her current single, "When You Say My Name," the lead single from the former pop starlet's upcoming sophomore album due out late summer. The new track is also the first official single to be sent to country channels since her transition to country music was completed. It looks like the country-pop hybrid isn't wasting any time making a splash in the country world.
James is a talented flok singer who continues to straddle the country and pop genres. "When You Say My Name" is her most country effort to date, yet it still makes hits from crossover artists like Lady Antebellum and Taylor Swift feel steeped in Nashville traditionalism. James clearly wants to be a country artist, and she has a voice strong enough to stand up on its own. The ultra cute & catchy, country/pop-ish tune is progress, but it ultimately ends up short of what even the most open-minded country music fans will be likely to embrace.
James, a larger-than-life talent, has that throaty, country roughness thing going on in her vocals, but really, it sounds a little too forced to be genuine. James still has some pop connections, however. The move to country seems like destiny. Most likely everyone was expecting James to come out with a "Wanted" 2.0 (her biggest hit yet) but she made it clear that she's a "country girl at heart," putting her foot down country music is in fact her thing, and that she wouldn't be comfortable just recording pure pop songs.
The newly-premiered Kristin Barlowe-directed music video perfectly captures the essence of the song. It shows James just hanging in her house, in a sexy pajama, feeling really happy about the beginning of a new relationship. She's so crazy in love, and just can't help but jumping on the sofa, dancing with a broom, or just doing silly stuff with her boyfriend. The clip ends with the boyfriend surprising her with a romantic dinner outside the house, but all they wanna do is dance closely, and hold each other.