Beaux Cheveux melds dirty, distortion filled slide guitar licks with feel good pop melodies. If Marnie Stern and the Beach Boys were holed up together in secluded bungalow, they might come up with “Deeper Feeling.” The video for this playful and sonically rich song cuts between images of guitarist and singer Adrian Conner frolicking on beaches and in fields wearing horse and chicken masks and sitting in a room shredding it on guitar. The impulses to rock out and chill are constantly smashing up against each other but with a gentle caress instead of a mosh pit shove.
Rapper Rich Chigga may look like a baller as he lights a cigar with a gun lighter while lying in a field of multicolored flowers at the beginning of “Glow Like Dat,” but as the eye-catching video plays it becomes clear he’s masking deeper emotions. The glow refers to an ex, and the absence of her radiance haunts him and thwarts his hedonistic endeavors. The song’s upbeat rhythm unfolds in deceptive counterpoint, which imbues the video with momentum.
Beginning with a low key and melancholic guitar riff, rapper Tin Tenn’s “Lucid Dreams” tells an epic story in less than four minutes of a woman who’s retreated into a seductive haze of drugs. Through the course of the song, her pop star ambitions seep out of the subconscious of her dreams into her waking hours. This transformation is captured in the video with striking images that bring to mind the raw beauty of Nan Goldin photographs.
Barry Rock’s “Closer” is a throwback rock ballad that falls somewhere between Rick Springfield and Bruce Springsteen. He further echoes the E Street Band with a saxophone flourish towards the end of the song. Rock wanders streets and performs on stage as he sings a plea to an unnamed and unseen girl who’s captured his heart.
Adina E’s “Changing” is an ethereal prayer that unfolds at a meditative pace. The song’s somber optimism is fittingly illustrated in the animated video that charts the journey of a runaway girl who’s lost in several ways but still retains the strength to keep searching. As she hops trains and hitchhikes, there’s a flower pinned near her heart. When she plants it in the ground towards the end of the video and curls up beside it, there’s a sense she’s grown stronger but the moment is ambivalent enough to leave the viewer with eerie wonder.