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Friday Five: Sims, Hippo Campus, and more new Minnesota music videos

by Andrea Swensson

August 22, 2014

Happy Friday! As the workin' week winds down, take a look back at some of the best Minnesota-made music videos to emerge this week—including a few from Adam J. Dunn's ongoing Lights and a Backdrop series, the latest of which he filmed at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis.

Before we get into this week's goods, I wanted to give a special shout-out to this new video from Chastity Brown, "Colorado," shot by the Current's own Nate Ryan, which is streaming exclusively on Muzu.TV this week. "Colorado" is the first single off of Chastity's forthcoming album, which is due out in the spring of 2015.

Sims

With a new album, Field Notes, out September 2 (and his big show with Astronautalis happening tomorrow night, August 23, at First Avenue), Sims performed his new single "Sims Jong Il" for the Lights and a Backdrop series. I'm still trying to decide which celebrity-name-turned-verb makes me laugh harder: "I'm Hasselhoffing this cheeseburger" or "I'm Nick Cage-ing this Vegas."

Actual Wolf

Actual Wolf's Eric Pollard is sounding more and more like Neil Young, especially in this slowed-down rendition of "Queen of Carolina" filmed for the Lights and a Backdrop series at the Southern.

Allan Kingdom and Spooky Black

It's impossible for me to listen to this song without getting a little loop of Allan Kingdom singing "Waaa-aa-aavey" rotating in the back of my mind. The song appears on Kingdom's latest, Future Memoirs, and it's also one of Spooky Black's first appearances in a music video since taking the internet by storm and raising more than a few eyebrows with his bizarre video for "Without You" earlier this year.

Hippo Campus

In case you missed it, Hippo Campus were recently the in-studio guests on the Local Show, and they performed their catchy summer hit "Little Grace" in addition to two other new jams. You can catch this up-and-coming band live tonight at the Lake Harriet Bandshell, where they'll be performing as part of Vita.mn's Music & Movies series.

MunQs

We may as well just consider this week's Friday Five an Adam J. Dunn takeover. In addition to shooting the aforementioned Lights and a Backdrop videos, Dunn also found time to direct the latest video for pop artist MunQs. "At Night" plays out like some kind of prom afterparty gone wrong, and it's a sharp contrast to Corey Lawson's gauzy, celestial voice.

 

Clean Water Land & Legacy Amendment
This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment’s Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.