Double month special edition! We’re going through not one, but two month’s worth of music videos in this post. Both July AND August 2025.

I can write about the September videos next month, right now I’m doing this. There are so many music videos posted to YouTube every month. Just video after video, upload after upload. And someone has to be here to keep track of the good ones so we remember. I have to email you the best music videos or we’re all going to forget.

Pro tip: be sure to focus on what list you’re looking at. Because in addition to the best of the month, we also highlight the WORST music videos every month. So make sure you know what list you’re looking at. I don’t want you looking at worst thinking it’s best. Because “worst” in this case doesn’t just mean the video has bad lighting or is boring or whatever. It means it’s actually harmful to YouTube and society.

And with that, here are the music videos worth remembering. Click the link in the table of contents to jump down to that video.

Clipse is two for two on this album so far. But in this case, they take the eye candy up a notch and it’s even more successful. I saw this music video in a theater a couple weeks ago and it gave me a literal boost of energy. The camera tricks are cool but they are even cooler when Pusha T and Malice are there. Also, perfect button at the end, one of my favorite endings of a music video this year.

The world needs more bands like KNEECAP. I would not have guessed that three shouty Irish rappers would be some of the most unapologetically pro-Palestinian liberation, but these guys have time and time again put themselves on the line for the cause. The video, which features footage from their now iconic Glastonbury set, was released less than a week after. An impressive feat by director Finn Keenen and team, especially with the animation components. But a necessary and effective tactic to keep the conversation centered around Palestine.

Your hipster ex-boyfriend’s favorite band is back. I feel like performance videos get a bad rap, especially when it’s credible artists like this one. But beyond the mixed media and the split screen, this video is mostly driven by performance and vibes. And not phony looking performance either, he’s got a microphone and everything. Add in some shots of the Tame Impala guy just shredding on a motorcycle and you got a video that keeps you entertained for 9 straight minutes.

One of the most grounded, poetic, and human videos we’ve featured this year. It took me 3 plays to get all the way through because it kept making me cry. This slice of life video features real people in real places, and is a meditation on loss, but also a celebration of life and the things that make it worth living. This video also features the most wholesome and communal comment threads on all of YouTube.

Trans utopia under a full moon in Malibu? Sign me up! Disiniblud is the newest glitchpop supergroup on the block, and the video for their self titled single is the latest in the people running naked in the forrest genre. There is the original, Sigur Rós “Gobbledigook,” then came Joywave “Tongues,” and now Disiniblud “Disiniblud.” All S-tier videos in their own right, but I think the inclusion of Grandma, the giant Never Ending Story style muppet head, raises this one above the rest.

I’m not sure this is even really a music video. Tyler has uploaded several highly produced videos of him performing songs from DON’T TAP THE GLASS, but none have the “Official Video” label. But whatever they want to call this, it’s entertaining, energetic, and it has Lebron James in it. So it’s getting a spot on the list.

Tyler’s not the only artist with a self-directed dance video this month. Lola Blanc has one too! Lola confronts the trope of the "scary old woman" often depicted in horror films. She subverts this narrative by casting an older dancer, Paula Ayotte, who brings a raw and unhinged energy to the performance, challenging ageist stereotypes in the process. It’s an impressive one-take video with a lot of lighting cues and camera movement, and Paula moves more gracefully throughout than I ever have in my whole life.

somber is a rare gen-z artist that signed his record deal before the viral Tik-Tok fame. Because of that, he seems to be going down a bit more traditional, timeless artist development track. And one cheat code for legitimacy is to have Gus Black direct a music video for you. Gus Black not only has the coolest name in music videos, he also could direct an elevated alt-rock video in his sleep. You could put a ham sandwich in a Gus Black video and it’ll be on SNL or Fallon in less than a month. Luckily for somber he’s more than a ham sandwich, he’s like a hot Julian Casablancas-type that looks like he’s never smoked a cigarette in his life. At one point he shows up in a freaking vest over a crop top but I gotta admit he was pulling it off.

This video kinda has it all. A funny and interesting narrative with performance and dance woven into the story. It’s cinematic as hell and feels fully realized. I’m not usually a fan of videos with such a long wind up without music, but the setup really hooks you and then it never lets your attention go. Plus the song is pretty short so it’s fine.

I’ve never really looked that deeply into the lore of $UICIDEBOY$, but their wikipedia page is a lot more tame than I expected. It’s interesting to think about how their name was both perfect for the Soundcloud era, and also just censored enough to fit into the authoritarian self-censored algo-speak all the kids are doing now. You see this mixed media aesthetic a lot these days, with film, VHS, and digital all mashed together. But when applied to the world of the $UICIDEBOY$, there is a rawness and messiness that makes it feel distinct. That handicam hits different when it’s being used to film an entire trailer being burnt down.

Dugan Gundelfinger used to be one of the hottest music video directors in the game in the early 2010s, before pivoting hard into commercials. But he’s reemerged to make a music video with his daughters for one his own songs. More people should do this. People should have creative side pursuits and instead of family photos they should make music videos with their family. It helps if your friends are Drew Bienneman and Ricky Gausis to shoot and color your video. But it doesn’t have to be them, you can use your own friends.

Ok so I thought this was going to be just a quick windmill dunk on an AI-generated song then we’d move onto August. But honestly the more I think about this, the more grim it seems. There are a million AI-generated videos uploaded to YouTube every day, so to single out this one as the worst, it’s gotta be truly bad. And not just because of how many times they make literal poop references in the lyrics.

If you don’t know Glorb, forgive me for introducing you. He’s an anonymous YouTuber that posts Spongebob rap videos created with like an AI voice simulator or something. Glorb also has an alt-account called Blorg, but instead of Spongebob it’s Simpsons and South Park characters rapping.

Glorb crawls out of the same boards and chans that have been the breeding ground for the ironic-to-nihilistic pipeline. Twitter, /pol/, weird Discord servers. These platforms are saturated with far-right, violent, and racist memes. The same part of the Internet that turned Pepe The Frog into a tool for online harassment has now turned Marge Simpson and Hank Hill into YouTube rappers. This isn’t simply edgy humor, it’s a cultural aesthetic blending irony, fandom, and dehumanizing detachment, all of which can dangerously blur the line between memes and real-world violence.

This type of thing isn’t new, it’s been happening online way before the AI bubble. Back in 2021, a song called “Outside (Remix)” by Yvng Mickey went viral for covering the song “Outside (Better Days)” by MO3 & OG Bobby Billions in the voice of Mickey Mouse. The person seemed to alter their voice naturally, without the help of AI or auto-tune, and the lyrics were slightly changed into a diss about Goofy. The problem is, MO3 was actually murdered prior to the release of the original song, the video is literally a tribute to him. The cover got deep fried and reshared on Tiktok and a hundred other places, most people who saw the meme don’t even know who MO3 is.

Last month, there was a mass shooting at a church in Minneapolis. It’s reported that the shooter had a bunch of messages and memes written on their gun, including the minimalist reddit meme “Loss.” All of this is cut from the same Internet cloth. Glorb’s videos, the Yvng Mickey cover, and the memes scrawled on that shooter’s gun share the same ironic, desensitized logic: cartoons, memes, and nihilistic humor act as a filter that flattens everything into content for the lols. As one user on Bluesky puts it, “it’s all so deeply soaked in irony and toxic fandom culture that if you aren’t actually researching this stuff for a living you really shouldn’t be engaging with it.“

The top comment on this video says, “I love when Florence and the machine is Florencing and machining” and that pretty much sums this up. Everyone is just screaming and carrying on. But on top of that, you also have Florence Welch just absolutely taking ownership of everything within 100 feet of her. Also big shout to the 90 second credit roll at the end of the video. That’s one way to avoid having the end of the video ruined by the insane YouTube popups.

BABYMETAL’s latest album is full of collabs with other heavy metal superstars, and their mashup with Spiritbox is likely the most natural. After going viral for an unsettling TikTok shot on set of this video, fans were buzzing about the release of this video, and director Deathcats did not disappoint. Staging the two bands on opposite sides of a life sized chess board. The choreography is literally insane and the casting of the Evil One is very inspired. I can’t believe they pulled off those dance moves on that life sized chess board, it must have been adhered to the ground with something very strong.

Every month, I search “official music video” on YouTube and watch every video uploaded within the previous 30 days. And this search yields mostly slop. People use music video SEO on all sorts of weird shit to get attention. This may be the best video to ever emerge from this workflow. I’ve never heard of any of these musicians or the video’s director, but I’m now a fan of all of them. The group choreography is incredible, especially with all of these really long takes. A lot of times they stay on a routine and don’t cut until the end. The climax of the video is one 50 second long take of an entire group dance route. They aren’t creating energy in the edit, it’s there already in the choreo.

While in the middle of releasing a ton of video content for this year’s album DON’T TAP THE GLASS, Tyler has also dropped an official video off the CHROMAKOPIA album from last year. A kind of rare and unexpected move, but T has written his own rules for years and I guess that continues. This is actually the only video from that August list by a male artist, I guess cementing that this summer was for the girlies. Speaking of girlies, the song is about how Tyler can’t keep falling in love with different women, and the video is about the same thing! The different women are played by Chase Infiniti, Nia Long, Ayo Edebiri, Willow Smith, and Lauren London. We know this because, like Florence, this video has a 50 second credit roll at the end.

Musically I’m not fully bought into Chappell Roan. It feels too much like show tunes to me. But this video is the envy of anyone that’s ever tried to shoot a music video in NYC. They weren’t just running around with a camera, they went big. Street closures with wind machines, fountain dips in Washington Square Park (gross), lighting the underground transit museum to look like a working subway. They did all the hard stuff. When a video obviously faced no budget challenges, you have to ask yourself, “is this good, or is this just expensive?” And while this video falls on the side of good, it’s the details that make it great. The City Bike, the Green Lady cameo, the old guy manspreading behind Chappell the whole time so she can’t sit down. That’s the New York I remember.

It’s clear Sabrina Carpenter is going to keep showing up on these lists. She just puts the right kind of effort into her music videos. They’re fun and entertaining which is good! Her latest sets her in a Rocky Horror Picture Show style predicament. Car trouble, a spooky mansion, and lots of drag. We’re here for it all. Also the guy who plays the Evil One from the BABYMETAL video is in this. Which is the type of callback we like to see here at MVND.

Ella Rosa “Weapon” is a sharp, unapologetic critique of male entitlement. The video is heavy on style and attention to detail, and balances humor, discomfort, and a spirited and convincing performances from both Ella and the male lead. Making it one of the most compelling and thematically precise releases this month.

There are dudes in the comments that misinterpret the video to be about “male self-discipline” and “moral integrity.” I can’t tell if these guys are trolling, or just unsuspecting gooners, but either way their comments add an even further layer to the videos themes and ideas.

Oh wow this is unsettling I love it. Stop motion? Puppets? Animation? NAILS? The execution on some of these ideas and techniques is truly next level. This is the second video in a row that deals with gender roles and objectification, but whereas “Weapon” is more of a take-down, “Trinkets” highlights the absurdity of these dynamics. Ashnikko basically treats her pretty princess boys as human Labubus. Riding them around, attaching them to her bag, and throwing them away when she’s done. Also important to note that we have ANOTHER full credit roll at the end of this video. Big month for burnt in credits.

Commissioned by friend of the pod Kareem Johnson, this video seems designed to showcase Cardi B’s jewelry and fancy wardrobe collection. She’s got designers on that I’m not gonna even try to pronounce. But no need to overthink it, this is everything it needs to be. We’re allowed to have one video without social commentary or subtext, sometimes a hip-hop and fashion icon just needs to come back and remind everyone who she is.

I can’t believe this guy’s rapper name is Tom MacDonald. This one is a lot more surface level so I don’t have to go as deep as I did for Glorb. A lot of people view politics like they do sports, but that’s not what this is. I don’t care if he dunks on democrats, the elected democrats have largely been pretty terrible since Tru*p took office again. But this dude is like outwardly anti-trans within the first 18 second of this song. This is the type of video you need to watch on Incognito mode or else it’s going to fuck up your algorithm fast. The concern is less about this one idiot making a terrible rap video about brain rot hot button issues from Twitter. It’s that there are a lot of regular people that base their whole identity on the ideas in this song.

And that’s it! Anyone that made it this far is a true music video head. What did I get right? What did I get wrong? Comment below and let me know.