The Streets > Prangin' Out
"Prang" is The Streets' Mike Skinner's standby colloquialism for the white powdery stuff, and to "prang out" is to suffer panic attacks as the result of too much of it. Needless to say, Skinner's latest single begs for a claustrophobic, skin-crawly promo, and RSA/Black Dog's Dawn Shadforth delivers with typical style. Taking cues from the stark visuals of Hitchcock and Kubrick, "Prangin' Out" begins with nervous twitches and droplets of sweat and descends into a hallucinatory funhouse of classic horror imagery. Pallid twins, long corridors and the requisite shower scene all combine to make a better case against drugs than any fried egg ever could. [Prodco: Black Dog/RSA; Label: 679 Recordings] MP

I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness> The Owl
One of the motion graphic community's best kept secrets, Canada's Emmanuel Ho augments a clean, geometric design style with vivid, immaculately rendered details. This promo for the Austin, Texas post-rock quartet is a stylized bit of mostly black-and-white animation that shows a panicked raven trying to break free from its tether and fly through an open window. Since this is more an allegorical vignette than a story, we won't go much further into plot; suffice it to say the clip's finest bits (the tensile stress of the the tether; the raven's rustling feathers) come courtesy of Ho's dazzling animation style. [Label: Secretly Canadian]. MP

The SoftLightes> Heart Made Of Sound
While we'll admit that we're in desperate need of an imminent stop-motion video sabbatical, the latest from unsigned Australian director Kris Moyes was simply too good to pass over. On paper, the idea behind "Heart Made Of Sound" (wherein the song's every word is represented visually in time with the music) might seem a bit timeworn, but Moyes' ingenious execution turns it into something special. From the paint cans that form to spell "you" to the assemblage of Slinkys that make up "spring", this is charming stuff. [Label: Modular People]. MP