Lillie Eiger directs a stripped-back and intense performance promo for rising pop star Chloe Qisha. The visual for Surprise, Surprise is shot in lingering takes, and the camera effectively takes the role of the boy that she is addressing in the song.It starts with Chloe in close, as if they are in intimate conversation. As her frustration grows, she moves further from the camera. Then as the track progresses, frantic movement and an inspired move from monochrome to colour matches the build in momentum.Eiger has directed several Chloe videos - including for Sex, Drugs & Existential Dread - as well as working with her as creative director. This is an absorbing, no-frills addition to a growing body of work.

Ruben Do Valle reunites with Bárbara Bandeira for a strikingly cinematic vision where the Portuguese pop singer explores her roots and takes part in a spectacular ceremony - to become un-wedded.Following the director's video for Marcha, which focusses upon the tension between tradition and change in modern Portugal, his film for Mau Olhado addresses new themes - superstition, fate, obsession and the impossibility of emotional closure - through a symbolic narrative and highly impressive visual setpieces.Bárbara Bandeira's performance of Mau Olhado (which translates as Evil Eye) again explores the clash between old and new, as a 1930s car brings her to a old-world university and within the scope of her lover. Bandeira brings pop star charisma to the piece with a dance routine interrupting the narrative.The climactic 'unwedding' ritual is almost Bergmanesque in its drama and setting: a priest-like figure, played by veteran actor José Raposo, officiates at a ceremony amid a crowd of robed onlookers on black rocks on the Portuguese coastline, establishing a highly dramatic atmosphere.Shot on 35mm film, in locations such as the Bugio lighthouse and the historic University of Coimbra, the narrative blends religious and folkloric imagery with a raw, tactile visual language. It juxtaposes isolation, ritual and Portuguese cultural identity with a contemporary pop sensibility. Very striking and impressive work indeed.

Oscar Ryan and Ewan Mcintosh direct a high energy, dance-driven promo for rising pop act XO. Ushering in a fresh entry to the girlgroup revival of late, the video for Hotline is a feverish showcase of choreography and performance. With a retrofuturistic, corporate environment and Y2K-influenced styling, the video takes the best of modern K-Pop and nostalgic Noughties visuals, and gives the whole thing a tighter, cleaner focus."The most important thing for us from the beginning was the choreography," say Ryan and McIntosh. "The girls have such a strong energy individually and together, so we wanted the camera language to respect that rather than overpower it. "We made a decision quite early on that the camera shouldn’t really move much at all, most of the movement comes through zooms, because we wanted the choreo to fully live in frame and feel super clear and direct. The song is such a bop that it felt wrong to hold anything back visually, so cloning the girls and building these infinite versions of them became a way of maximising the energy of the track. By the final chorus it feels like the whole world starts overflowing with different versions of XO."The girls were amazing throughout the shoot and brought such a good energy into the space from the second we started. There’s already a real trust growing between all of us and I think that only gets stronger the more projects you make together."We also had to squeeze everything into one day with no pre-light, so the crew absolutely carried this one. From Fyo producing the whole thing to runners staying late with us while we squeezed out the final setups, everybody pushed hard to make the video what we imagined when we first started conversations with the girls, management and label. There are always shots you lose on the day, but this one landed really close to the vision we had from the start."There’s also a crazy amount of hidden VFX work throughout the video that Ewan handled. A lot of it isn’t supposed to be noticeable at all, it’s constantly stitching performances together and helping sell the illusion of multiple versions existing in the same space. It was definitely a process but it cleans everything up so seamlessly."