Isabel Garratt directs a delightful stop motion animated video for Eels' Earth To Dora - the title track of band's new album. It's Garratt's first project since joining the directors' roster at Prettybird in London, and released the day before Earth Day.The music video finds Dora living on the moon, surrounded by otherworldly sadness and surreal depictions of misery - and a very large snake. It's up to E (Mark Oliver Everett, the band's frontman) to convince Dora it's time to come back down to Earth. E and Dora's story of interplanetary friendship plays out with the deft combination of two different animation techniques - puppetry and painting on glass. The Welsh director - who's previous work includes the award-winning short film Listen To Me Sing - undertook the stop motion aspect of the production, mixed with paintings by animators David McShane and Renee Zhan.Garrett is an alumna of the National Film and Television School and artist-in-residence at Alexander McQueen’s Sarabande Foundation, where she created the video. She now joins Prettybird's global roster of multidisciplinary directors working across branded entertainment. “I’m so happy that Isabel has joined the PRETTYBIRD UK director roster," says Juliette Larthe, co-founder and executive producer of Prettybird UK. "Isabel’s unique stop-motion animation technique, mixed with painterly elements and an ethereal sensibility, her innate humour and magical way she expresses emotion with her character stole my heart when I saw her work, and I’m delighted we are now working together.”

Edie Lawrence presents Sad Night Dynamite's headline set a summer festival... in plasticine.The video for Smoke Hole begins with Archie and Josh - aka SND - driving along country roads in their stretch limo to Shimewaza - a festival in their honour, populated by masses of devoted, unquestioning followers. And Lawrence has done a remarkable job in creating the festival vibe that you badly missed last summer - the hippies, the merch, the fairground attractions... and as night falls, a banging set by the SND boys to a crowd of thousands.This oddball dark comedy is a parallel reflection of the current state of the world - all achieved with plasticine animation, cardboard sets and greenscreen footage. Lawrence joins that small group of claymation animators who have made a memorable impact in music videos down the decades. She's a talent to watch for 2021.

Mark Jenkin directs a beautifully abstract vision for Bicep's Apricots. Building upon the track's focus on repetition and tempo, the video doesn't follow a traditional structure, instead using impressionist-style visuals and DIY techniques to achieve the final result. Transcendent and thought-provoking, the concept feels timeless, borrowing aspects of various styles and ideas from the past and present to create something brilliantly unique yet familiar.

Chris Hopewell directs a wonderful 2020 reimagining of Yusuf/Cat Stevens's seminal hit Father & Son. As the song reaches its 50th anniversary, the new version features Yusuf/Cat as he is now singing the role of the father, brought together digitally with a recording of his younger self, originally recorded at his historic performance in the Troubadour Club, Los Angeles in 1970.If the recreation of this wonderful song is momentous, then Chris Hopewell has risen to the occasion with its video. Like everything else he does, it's stop motion model animation. But he achieves a moving and utterly believable drama from the characters he creates and the world around them.The video depicts animated versions of the Father and Son in a house, which bereft of a female presence, with an inability to connect to each other. Exploring love, loss and a sense of urgency as the clock ticks away, the regret is palpable, and perfectly visualised through the 3D concept. The attention to detail is brilliant, and the anachronistic sense of time and space makes the visual all the more universal.

Gaia Alari directs a soft and ethereal hand-drawn concept for Dana Gavanski's reworking of King Crimson's I Talk The Wind.The song - taken from Wind Songs, Gavanski's new EP of cover versions - exudes a sense of nostalgia and introspection, and the video follows suit, focusing on the minutiae of everyday life: plastic bags in the breeze, the way the light falls in different situations, nature blooming in our peripheral vision. The hand-drawn animation is beautifully executed and maintains a sense of DIY craftsmanship, echoing the dichotomy of reality and fiction and the whirlwind of emotions we share as humans.

Michel Gondry returns with brother Olivier to bring some magic to the world of music video. And the wonderful surprise it is a political satire in childlike cartoon form for the corruscating rock of Bristol band IDLES.Michel and Olivier have visualised IDLES' frontman Joe Talbot's scathing portrait of English village life in Model Village, and Michel in particular has returned to his roots with a burst of childlike imagination delivered in a genuinely DIY fashion, in a wonderfully homespun but ultimately hugely powerful lockdown project.Produced by Partizan in collaboration with WePresent - the editorial platform of WeTransfer, which premiered the video with an extensive piece on its making - Michel has drawn, cut-out and stop-frame animated his own paper version of Talbot's Model Village. Olivier then added CG enhancement and post, so that it becomes something akin to a pop-up children's book.If Talbot's sketch of smallmindness and bigotry in the small town where he grew up can be regarded as a swipe at the mindset of Brexit England (and Wales), the Gondry approach lifts it onto another level. This village is populated by pig-people, dominated by the local bully, fuelled on drink, pills and weapons. But there is a beacon of hope: an adventurer-astronaut who aims to escape the confines of the village. Talbot's characteristic vocal delivery works remarkably well with the visuals, which sway between from elements of social comment and surreal flights of fancy. Meanwhile, the element of satire feels like this is the Gondrys paying homage to the great Eastern European animators like Jan Svankmeyer who Michel has venerated since his teens. Watch the Behind The Scenes video, including clips from the directors' Zoom meeting with Joe Talbot at the start of the process, here.Talbot studied Film at university a decade ago, and has been a Gondry fan for a long time. He told WePresent: “Michel’s work is handmade and it's human and that's something that our society pushes against: you need to be perfect. You need to look perfect and everything needs to be seamless and strong. But actually, vulnerability and naivety are strengths. To be vulnerable and to be naive is to have empathy. And so, to empathise with your adversaries and allow yourself to be naked on film or on record is a really strong thing to do. It liberates you and it also liberates your audience. That's something that I hope that IDLES can do, and that Gondry's been doing for years.”Also speaking to WePresent, Michel Gondry added: “Olivier and I were excited to work on this because we use completely opposite techniques. I work with a primitive system of cutting paper and moving it under the lens frame by frame. Olivier then transforms it by morphing, warping and CGI. Basically, in the first part we try to illustrate the lyrics as close as possible, to create the world, and then in the second half...they go to the moon.”Ultimately the message of Model Village chimes with Michel Gondry's own creative credo: nothing is more important than freedom of individual expression. And for him the best way to channel that freedom is through childlike wonder.

rubberband. direct a stop-motion tour de force for their latest collaboration with Lewis Del Mar. Working in conjunction with lead animator James Siewert, the directing duo - Jason Sondock and Simon Davis - have used restrictions and production limitations to their advantage creating a tactile, animated kaleidoscope of punchy and colourful imagery. It’s the literal manifestation of multimedia overload as commentary on the information-saturated world. The different layers of the music video feel reminiscent and representative of a modern media diet, a visual metaphor and embodiment of how we interact with different outlets and channels with a throwback, handmade feel.

Chris Hopewell has directed the new video for Yusuf/Cat Stevens’ 2020 reimagining of his 50 year old ecological anthem Where Do The Children Play? (from the classic 1970 album Tea For The Tillerman) creating a disturbing vision of a world ruined by pollution and waste.Two children are playing on a suburban street, when they are confronted by a sea of plastic bottles, and then transported to the heart of darkness - the city which has become the centre of an environmental disaster. The kids join up with the remaining residents of the destroyed city to begin the reversal of the process, to save the planet.“Looking at the world today and the message in this fifty-year-old song, it looks like the world never grew up,” says Yusuf / Cat Stevens, who has re-recorded Tea For The Tillerman, for the generation that needs to hear the message more than ever.And in creating his hellish vision of our world, Chris Hopewell has also practised what he preaches. In creating the video at Jacknife, his studio in Bristol, Hopewell has aimed to have the least possible impact on the environment: nearly everything you see in the video was made from recycled material and old plastic. It's a memorable work that mirrors the environmental message of the song.