Yesterday, it was tarot cards, today it's Ouija boards. (Somewhere, Bob Larson is praying for Seattle's hipster Satanists.) Grave Babies' new clip for "Fuck Off," from last month's Gothdammit EP--reviewed here for Reverb Monthly--uses re-sampled TV screen footage as grainy and distorted as their fuzzed-out sound. There's hands working the occult board game and a goth girl who looks like she could be waiting to play "light as a feather stiff as a board" but who ends up getting spookily manhandled as much as any Hasbro planchette. Tomorrow's video debut: full-on demonic possession?! (Fingers crossed.)

Though the video is nearing two months old, I've been watching/listening to it a ton lately, which makes it relevant in my mind. Plus: it's dope. It's another good looking vid from the filmmakers at Boom Tee Vee, and both the song ("Self Made") and visual accompaniment seem like a mission statement for local MC Mega. He tells us about his undying drive (or at least that of a "NASCAR participant") to get money, and takes us around his neighborhood (the Central District) with some of his guys. The beat, which the Youtube description credits White Hot for, fits nicely, and lines like "When bars I spit are that hard, ni**a, that's called imprisonment," make me wish I'd heard of this guy sooner. Get familiar.

Wholesome summer fun is pretty much Witch Gardens' entire steez, so no surprise that their new video for "Aunt Shae, Mean Colleen" off of recent EP release R-I-P (mini-reviewed here in May's Reverb Monthly) is basically a pre-season primer in how to have a good day out once the weather gets warm:

1. Ride your bike
2. Go to the beach
3. Get on a boat.
4. Have a potluck/BBQ/house party.

Oh, also invoke the occult in there somewhere. Couldn't be simpler.

Possum Dixon guitarist Celso Chavez, who passed away yesterday.

I've been reminiscing about the 90's far too much lately, and in doing so, I've been revisiting a lot of the records that turned me on my head in high school and college. Amongst those records is a total underdog of a band worth championing, Los Angeles' Possum Dixon. Managing to blend The Cars' new wave, the raw jangle of The Animals, the hopped-up libido of the Violent Femmes and the Pixies manic unpredictability, Possum Dixon had some songs that charted well enough on college/modern rock radio but never quite found the right rhythm to sustaining it all. Almost 20 years after the release of their debut album, it still sounds like an out of control joyride through restless days spent in office jobs and nights spent in dingy nightclubs and crumbling stucco apartments.

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Laura Musselman

Katie Kate performing at Reverb Fest 2011

From the Out For Stardom clique this week comes a Stephan Gray-shot video for Katie Kate's song "Uh...No" from last year's sleeper hit Flatland. To refresh our memory, Kate's self-produced tracks have winning character, and "Uh...No" is no exception. Though I'm not entirely captivated by her raps, she has an enjoyable swagger, and shows off some flashy moves in the video. Said video includes some classy guest appearances by OC Notes and Rik Rude (aka the illustrious Metal Chocolates), Mad Rad's Buffalo Madonna and Terry Radjaw, and drummer about town Trent Moorman among others. Allow me to say generally that this video (filmed at Capitol Hill artspace FRED Wildlife Refuge) might be Gray's best thus far, which is saying something, 'cause he's already crafted a few classics. Enjoy:

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The Black Keys play KeyArena on Tuesday, May 8.

I get the reason people are interested in the Black Keys. Really, I do. In terms of what's being played on major alt-radio airwaves at the moment, their fuzzy, blues-y licks and alpha male moaning stick out like a sore thumb (in a good way) from the sea of processed sixteenth-note loving dance-rock bands that look more like Abercrombie models or soap opera stars than they do an honest-to-God rock band. The Akron, Ohio duo benefit from an undeniably charming backstory, too; a soccer team captain and a nerd from the rust belt meet in high school, play shithole bars and sleep on floors until they magically howl their way to arenas. On paper, the band sounds faultlessly great. It's hard to hate on that sort of real American success story.

Maybe it's the fact that, on that same paper full of a great story, lies a lot of facts that are just a little too eerily similar to a little duo from a garage in Detroit, another "face made for radio" couple known as The White Stripes. However, whereas Jack White has spent the past decade letting the general public know what a weird dude he is (I get the sense he probably sleeps in a coffin with a taxidermied bear, if he even sleeps at all), nothing about Patrick Carney or Dan Auerbach is strange enough for superstardom. Maybe there's something unique and haunting underneath all of that unremarkableness, but all I can see are a couple guys who look a lot more suited to the IT department than being rock stars.

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Moms are cool. Moms that take you in during the dark times and let you record stunning debut albums like Perfume Genius' Learning in their house are super-cool. So what better way to say thanks and pay tribute, with Mother's Day fast approaching, than with a music video? For the new clip for Put Your Back N 2 It's "Dark Parts" (directed by Winston H. Case), Hadreas goes home again to hang out with mom Carmen Hadreas-Boggs, along with bandmate/boyfriend Alan Wyffels (and Others). It's a simple quiet night at home: dogs, dinner, scrabble, ritual dancing in the backyard, a creepy Twin Peaks tree-climb. Like a lot of Perfume Genius' songs, "Dark Parts" is haunted, frail, but ultimately hopefully, with Hadreas' voice wavering but persevering over a rush of piano--and the video's contrast between mythic dark and domestic comforts makes for a simple but terribly effective treatment.

"With THEESatisfaction/Champagne Champagne the main attraction."

Before jazzy Rap&B duo THEESatisfaction pushed boundaries with Shabazz Palaces and toured the globe, they were half of another righteous experimental hip hop movement with Champagne Champagne. As they have with Shabazz, TS performed frequently in tandem with CC, and laid down a few tracks in the studio to capture for posterity the creative energy that the team had at the time. The product, you may remember, was a 2010 two-song 7" called Magnetic Blackness, fronted by its empowerment/party anthem title track, and backed up by spacious B-side "Bird Lives!". The two tracks were the height of innovation in the field that year and the performances were epic (here's a wild one at the Comet, and here's one at the EMP Sky Church during the previous year's Bumbershoot which ends with CC MC Pearl Dragon literally walking on top of the crowd).

Both groups have released individual material recently, and this week, each dropped a music video: TS's "QueenS"; and CC's "4 Horsemen". The similarities and differences in the videos/songs show how each group has progressed/stayed the same since their time together, and perhaps, where they are each headed. Let's take a look:

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la206.bandcamp.com

The header on La's Bandcamp page (above) kind of says it all: money; weed; skating; style; beats; samples. La preaches a certain way of life, and by all accounts (well okay, his) he rides hard for it. La (formerly known as Language Arts) fills his verses with material imagery from the pictorial list above, but the brash lifestyle braggadocio is always accented by sly sociopolitical commentary and jabs at his largely outmatched competition that are both exceedingly clever and intricately delivered. Take for example the lines:

"You're not like La, homie, that boy raw/even if we both ended our evening with an Artois(à trios)/fella you had a Stella and me, I had a ménage/with chicks thicker than Nicki and Vicky gave me massage/Don't believe these rapper's visions, it's just a shitty mirage/Always been myself, that's why my city applaud/why the South End look like the City of God"

from the song "Frank Hirata" off of his latest album Ocean Howell. The quote spans topics from lyrical prowess, innuendo, pop-culture reference, his rap competition, introspection, and social criticism, and sounds as breezy as a casual conversation.

The new Ken Lapworth-filmed video for the song captures (in no-cut fashion) this laid-back demeanor as the MC takes a visually annotated walk through an alleyway, and tells a pretty complete story by the time he gets to the other side. One of the great things about La's tracks is that he can tell a full story in a short period of time--a song, a verse, or even a bar. Another great thing is that his rhymes are the best you'll hear in--or out--side of the city bar none. Video after the jump...

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NachoPicasso.com

In a personality--or at least image--heavy format like hip hop, videos are probably the best way to familiarize yourself with a new artist. They allow you to get a more complete picture of what kind of artist the MC is/is trying to be, and can provide context for a given song. Take, for example, the new videos from local guys Peta Tosh and Nacho Picasso with Blue Sky Black Death:

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