Wait! About 2006, about Sir Robbie Of Williams, about "She's Madonna," we'd nearly forgotten how unbelievably great and gorgeous the whole thing is.

Slow-mo! Drag queens! Self-awareness! Role reversals! Pet Shop Boys!

The pitch-perfect, straight-faced absurdism.

"You're a good guy, Robbie."

Every acclaimed music-video of the last three years can only be embarrassed for trying.

In the way I want to write a line-by-line analysis of "Rapper's Delight" ("...now what you hear is not a test..."), I want write an image-by-image analysis of the video for one of the most magical pop tunes ever composed, "Hangin' On A String (Contemplating)":

Her new video, for the single "Bad Romance." (The song's no great shakes—it sounds like a rough draft of "Poker Face," which you can sing along to it—but the video is something to see.)

As soon as Camille Paglia weighs in with an essay, Lady Gaga's transformation into "the next Madonna" will be complete....

Head Like a Kite (Dave Einmo and Stranger contributor Trent Moorman) and Saturday Knights rapper Tilson have been doing some tracking and wisecracking in Electrokitty Studio with Gary Reynolds. They're shown here mixing the song "Director's Cut" for the Give Seattle 2009 compilation. The Give comp (due out Nov. 17) features exclusive tracks from Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, Blue Scholars Common Market, Dave Bazan, Cave Singers, the Long Winters, and others. All proceeds go to local Seattle food banks and the Arts Corp.

Head Like a Kite's next gig happens at the Crocodile with Foscil and Animals at Night Sat. Nov. 21.

Finnish electronic-music/jazz composer-drummer Vladislav Delay's new video for "Toive" (off the recent Tummaa album, which I reviewed here) is gorgeous and kind of quease-inducing. Directed by Carolina Melis (whose credits include clips for fellow Leaf label artists Efterklang and Colleen) and Lorenzo Sportiello, the video, according to the press release, "is a journey into a spectacular miniature landscape, with crystals forming and transforming into new substances." It is also sooo Scandinavian—and unlike most music videos in that the directors don't assume everyone in the world suffers from ADHD.

Who needs FAIL Blog? From the life-improving SUCCEED Blog, here's that heartwarming Dance Party Starting Succeed, filmed at the Northwest's very own Sasquatch Fest.

Shook Ones' latest full-length, The Unquotable A.M.H., is one of my favorite local records of the year. I'm a broken record, I know. I've said basically that same thing here and here already (although there I said it was the best record of the summer and summer's over, so they've graduated to year, since it's still fucking fantastic).

Anyway, they just released a video for the song "Silverfish." It's cute. It's like an old pop-punk video you'd find on one of the Cinema Beer compilations circa 1998 or something. Well done, boys.

Seattle chillwaver Big Spider's Back (aka Yair Rubinstein) played live on KEXP yesterday at noon—you can stream the set here. Now some joker has made a perfectly faded and blurry and color-saturated video (it's the chillwave aesthetic!) for his song "Warped", which you can watch here:

In my attempt to avoid posting the most obvious Halloween music video of all time*, I wanted to post Dusty Springfield's "Spooky." But not only is the 60s classic YouTube-nonexistant (Seriously? Like, not even a bad recording-of-a-recording of the song under a moving photo montage of Dusty press photos? Has YouTube let me down?); you can't even buy it on iTunes unless you buy the entire Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels soundtrack, which apparently I am too cheap to do.

So sometimes when you set out to find one thing, you find another. In this case, I stumbled upon The Puppini Sisters, an immensely talented and annoyingly-named Verve recording act. Uh, is it weird that I kind of love this? Especially the way they go "mmm-hmm-op" barely moving their lips?

The Black Whales just released a video for the song "Diamond Divide," from their new self-titled full-length record.

If you're unfamiliar with the local band, here's what I said about them many a couple moons ago, when they played Bumbershoot.

The Black Whales play the Sunset on November 7th.

Tegan and Sara's new album, Sainthood, was released yesterday. It as produced by Chris Walla and it was a twending topic on Twitter! (Sorry.)

Here's the video for the album's first single, "Hell":

Just look at those impermeable faces, those sweeping moves, those flowing clothes....

We can no longer make R&B that has this kind detachment, control, elegance. Black elegance can never be retrieved; it can only recede. "The pain of too much pleasure..."

I stopped caring about taking Weezer seriously years ago. But their new song, "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To" is far less annoying than "Beverly Hills" or "Pork and Beans." And the video is isn't bad either. I mean, they get punished for all their sins! They're getting shot with arrows, getting their hands cut off, getting hit by a truck... it's cute.