Directing duo TEARJERKER direct a touching exploration of love and relationships, in their seventh promo for The Academic. The loved-up video for My Very Best is the third in a trilogy for the group's latest album, and is set against the backdrop of the annual Matchmaking Festival in Lisdoonvarna, Ireland.Anchored by farmer Willie Daly - the third in a line of traditional matchmakers - the video is a hopeful, heartwarming tale which documents the hope and bravery of people attending in anticipation of making a match. Evoking a sense of timeless love, the duo blended a modern and vintage aesthetic, using an old Sony DV camera and Arri Alexa Mini. The Academic themselves appear in a performance shot in a community hall, tying the whole thing together in their own energetic way.Hope and Ronan of TEARJERKER had come across a sign for Europe's Largest Singles Festival while taking a road trip along the Wild Atlantic Way on the West Coast of Ireland a couple of years ago with a bunch of friends. They had stopped to take a photo next to the sign."Sadly it was cancelled that year, but we knew we'd be back to capture it one day," explains Hope. "There is something so brave and hopeful about the people going there with the anticipation and nervousness of finding a match, we wanted to document that feeling."We took a tiny film crew there and we've truly never seen anything like it. It's an Irish match-making festival so there was a lot of boozing and the endorphins were high. We witnessed some pretty X-rated moments that didn't quite make it into the final cut."All the friends from the photo with the sign are all in relationships now, so maybe there really is something in the air in Lisdoonvarna."The directors add that their long working relationship with The Academic has changed the way they make music videos. "There's such trust and respect between everyone working on the projects. The themes are often the same — youth, heartbreak, hope, big dreams in a small town — but we’ve tried to mix genres and form. We want each one to feel different.”

Sleaford Mods lament the state of the UK in the brilliant video for UK GRIM. Directed by iconoclastic collage artist and satirist Cold War Steve, the video features a lo-fi patchwork of cutout still images and animation, perfectly suited to visualise the band's message about the damage wrought on Britain by years of Conservative rule and Brexit. In the fashion of his vibrant artworks, Cold War Steve creates information-packed compositions depicting the likes of Farage and Rees-Mogg, Thatcher, Rupert Murdoch and Boris Johnson, presiding over Hellish landscapes of a collapsing Britain. With suitably bold imagery, the artist captures the chaos of the country with a nod to the work of 16th century artist Breughel, which also gets included in Cold War Steve's crowded collages. A brilliantly appropriate and timely satire.

Matt Grass directs an atmospheric promo for The Manatees' The Sound, a punchy blend of story and performance, featuring fragments of a narrative alongside enigmatic, artistic shots of the band. Suitably moody and mysterious, it's a fine collaboration between the band and director for a real earworm of a track. "This was the second video I directed for this group of lads," says Grass. "It seemed like a natural partnership as the song is deeply rooted in the band finding their footing in their music and really maturing as artists. "I have been a more or less one-man-band creating visuals for almost two years and only now am I really finding my visual style and creating a visual language that I feel represents me. I think this video was great timing for both of us."I wanted to keep this video simple narratively, but throwing in just enough that it's telling you a story and creating this world in which the band exists to find their relevance in the industry."I took deep inspiration from David Fincher's series Mindhunter, and despite working mostly alone decided that I wanted to craft scenes that have a similar feeling with the dark ominous lighting, presenting the band in a more gritty light as they embark on this moment of their artistic journey."

Joe Wheatley directs an idiosycratic and mysterious road movie for Ben Woods, aka The Golden Dregs.The black and white promo for Before We Fell From Grace opens with two characters travelling by foot across a wintry landscape. One of the pair - played by dancer Joe Grey Adams - is dressed entirely in white, and leads the other in a flamboyant folk-dance, seemingly inspired by some kind of otherworldly force. They reach a lake, and then the other character - played by Woods - pulls out a mysterious object. They walk further across the terrain through woods to a place where this enigmatic journey reaches its climax."Ben approached me after Mark Jenkin, my old university lecturer and friend, never got back to him - and I don’t mind that at all," says Joe Wheatley. "He had some key references such as Bait, Paris Texas and True Stereo, my video for Willie J Healey. If there’s anything I might know how to do it’s people wandering around in places."I loved the track. He’s an extremely talented artist and fellow Falmouth graduate. I had some pretty heavy duty darker ideas that he liked but we ultimately settled on this kind of meditation on loss. Initially Ben wanted to find a body but we settled on the thing in the video that I still don’t know how to describe but the amazing prop maker, Rosie Tonkin, seemed to be telepathic and absolutely smashed it. "For the majority of my filmmaking I’m having the most fun dreaming up a project and then executing it. My enthusiasm wanes when I cross the finish line as I’m often worried if it’s any good or not. This project has been the exact opposite for me. Our first shoot day was cancelled midway through. We then waited a month whilst Ben was on tour to complete the shoot."As the sands of time rolled on to our second shoot day we battled with daylight saving hours, some of the worst rain I’ve experienced, a pheasant shoot holding us up and Ben getting an unauthorised haircut. Needless to say I was thrilled to get this one across the line."

Six talented graduates from Georges Méliès animation school in Orly, France, present this poignant animated promo for Paris-based singer-songwriter Kriill. It features a little cow called Meurie, who encounters a giant who will destroy her idyllic world.Both sweetly illustrated and uncompromising, Little Things is powerfully effective in showing the devastating impact modern animal farming has on both animals and the environment at large. The video is a surreal, dreamlike trip through the grim reality of agri-business, with a heartwrenching message. Already picking up awards at several international festivals, the short film is a tour de force of creativity and collaboration, and lingers long after watching. A must-watch from a talented group of up and comers.

The second in a series of videos by William Williamson for Philip Selway of Radiohead's forthcoming solo album Strange Dance continues the story begun in the first.The video for Picking Up Pieces features the same quartet of iconic dancers as the video for Check For Signs Of Life: Siobhan Davies, Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp, Liam Francis and Simone Davies - with the piece also choreographed by Liam Francis and Simone Davies.Once again, it is filmed as a one-shot, with cinematography by DoP Adric Watson, this time working with colour 16mm film. The video features a spinning camera movement designed to mimic motoric pulse of the track, and takes it’s gorgeous golden brown autumnal colour palette from a painting made by artist Stuart Geddes in response to Selway’s new album.“We all viewed this film as a continuation of the last, with the choreography having echoes of our characters worlds whilst simultaneously unfolding new elements and emotions," says Williamson."I love the idea of creating a synergy between the music and the camera movement. So we not only decided to shoot this as a one take again, but the motorik pulse of the track and the powerful lyrics perfectly lent itself to a predominant circular camera movement."Working closely with the dancers we wanted the constantly moving camera to be always revealing different components and layers of the performance, drawing attention to specific points within each frame as it passes by and the story slowly unfolds.“

Ewan Jones Morris takes us back into the marvellous world of cut-up montage animation - and then adds a modern tech spin for good measure - for South London indie band Hotel Lux.The video for the rather excellent Points Of View is a surreal mash of performance and textures, with a nostalgic zine aesthetic, courtesy of the technique of mixing cut-out stills with lo-fi video of the band performing, and other paper elements, that Jones Morris executed with the help of Louise Mason and William Reid. Together the three of them run a 'collage club' at State51, Hotel Lux's label, called Sticky Pleasure, where people hang out and make collages. So the video became a logical extension of that project.But as well as creating animating in the old-fashioned stop-frame way, Jones Morris also employed some AI to extend the capacity of the form. The effect is to super-charge the animation without disrupting its essential character.So body parts and landscapes entangle, faces crumple and eyeballs appear at every corner, in this wonderful, whimsical piece of work. "The video is pretty straightforward, low budget fare: lads, guitars and paper collage," explains Jones Morris. "But despite it's lo-fi DIY aesthetic some of the imagery is created by feeding collages into AI algorithms and seeing how the images are reinterpreted."I guess it's partly an attempt to utilise some of these already ubiquitous AI image generators in a very handmade, lo-fi way."

Andrew Litten's thought-provoking video for Belle & Sebastian features Olympic figure skater Jonathan Cassar, who uses his time on the ice to escape from the demons of his past.Litten's approach to I Don't Know What You See In Me - a song from the new Belle & Sebastian album Late Developers - is to create a starkly cold aesthetic and faintly disturbing atmosphere at a vintage ice rink, which is deserted apart from the presence of Cassar. This is a real counterpoint to the familiar lightness of B&S frontman Stuart Murchoch's voice, and then the champion skater begins a graceful routine on the ice with plastic bag taped around his head. This powerful symbol of suffocation remains until the final moments of the video. "The band was passionate about this being a character study of a figure skater, and referenced one of my favourite noirs, The Swimmer," Litten explains. "I wanted to juxtapose the sensitivity of the song - which speaks to depression, self image and acceptance - with a narrative that confronts these feelings head on."The bag and the pulses of suffocation serve as a reminder of the baggage we carry throughout our lives, and how we cannot truly see ourselves until we have done the work to do so. I have endless gratitude to Stuart and the band for allowing us to create something so bold and unnerving with a hint of catharsis."It's a touching and powerful exploration of self acceptance, with plenty of engaging visuals to keep viewers hooked.