Video Round-Up: YACHT, Oxykitten, Cop Tears, Nurses and more

Sometimes we like to round-up a few recent Portland music videos. That's what this is. (Sorry for the brevity—been hanging out on Twitter recently.)

YACHT, "I Walked Alone"

Not too many YACHT songs have sweet-ass guitar solos—it's even rarer to see Jona Bechtolt actually PLAYING a guitar—which automatically puts "I Walked Alone" in a league by itself. The rest of the track is somewhat uncharacteristically sugary (feels kind of like Katy Perry covering the Clash to me somehow). Visually, we once again see the duo's love of the great outdoors and striking juxtaposition. That last scene, where the band drags a roomful of drugged-looking followers around the room and adjust them into power positions, may not help YACHT shake the whole "cult" thing, but then one gets the feeling Jona and Claire are curating that image pretty closely by now.

Seems to me that one of the opening lyrics ("If my friends were a crowd, it might not be the biggest, but it would be deafeningly loud") is a sentiment that all bands should aspire to in building a fanbase. Still, "I Walked Alone" can't help remind me a bit of this.

It only gets weirder from here, folks! Jay Winebrenner (31Knots) directed this terrifying video for his new band, Cop Tears, for a song he says is about "relationships, flaccid hero culture, self hate and masculinity." That's Jay in the video—yup, the guy with the baby for a penis—contorting his naked body into strange positions and repeatedly blowing his brains out. 

You'll have to make your own connections on the plot front, but Winebrenner is certainly developing a flashy visual style in his early videos (see this one he did for Mattress), and it's a style that reminds me of a darker Pee-Wee's Playhouse or a slightly more serious Tim & Eric. In its own way, this video does sorta capture everything that sucks about being a man. Maybe I'll explain that one to my therapist rather than to you.

"Pretty" isn't always the first word that comes to mind when I think about Nurses' music, but the Hooves on the Turf blog captured some quite pretty performances (and filmed them in a pretty, green-ish wash) of the Portland outfit playing what looks like a closed-down diner. Good stuff.

The Field Hymns label always seems to give us cool, weird shit to stare at and this Oxykitten video is no exception. Just the thing for your next psychedelic dance party or LSD trip!

Uhmmm, what the FUCK!? I thought this would be the worst thing ever, when I saw the description, but it is actually the best thing ever. Mr. Brown is a New Orleans artist who moved to Portland after Katrina, and he has a million dollar idea here. Well, okay, I'm not sure how many visual artists would really find this hybrid paintbrush/boombox/sampler tool useful, but I think Brown could take it on the road as a performance art/concert thing. This pretty much made my day...