Heartbreaking Bravery

Now that Watch This is back to its regular Sunday scheduling, the concentrated efforts of the week can feel even more staggering. By confining outstanding clips featuring Big Thief, Kevin Morby, Winter, Nothing, Noxious Neighbors, Oscar, Tiny Fireflies, Suss Cunts, Fear of Men, Bad Bad Meow, Tancrède, Megafauna, Victoria+Jean, Tacocat, Holy Fuck, Michael Kiwanuka, Fruit Bats, My Bubba, Italian Boyfriend, Chris Farren, and The Districts to a single seven-day span, the volume of material that gets covered starts to feel a little more concrete (and remains fairly intimidating). All of the acts to earn a featured spot in this 133rd installment of the Watch This series have been praised on this site before. Here, they reaffirm those early nods of approval with excessively strong works that deserve praise. So, as always, sit back, block out any distractions, adjust the settings, focus up, and Watch This.

1. Audacity (3voor12)

After “Not Like You” saw Audacity rejoin the featured music videos fold, they confidently re-emerge in the Watch This series as well. The band’s always excelled in the live setting so the wildly entertaining nature of this session for 3voor12 shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. It’s continuing to be a pleasure to watch their live chops grow sharper with age and this is no exception.

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2. Palehound (NPR)

Palehound‘s grown incrementally more impressive each time I’ve caught their live show and this beautifully shot  NPR session from last year’s CMJ is a reminder of their potency in that department. Driven by the astonishing talent of Ellen Kempner and elevated by incredibly tight rhythm section work, the band’s attained a confident ease that suits both their music and their performances to perfection.

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3. Margaret Glaspy – You & I (Conan)

One of the artists who’s been experiencing a very deserved breakouts this year has been Margaret Glaspy, whose Emotions and Math has proven to be one of 2016’s most nuanced and self-assured solo releases. Glaspy pulls inspiration from a wide-reaching variety of genres and continuously finds a way to make them coalesce into songs that frequently wind up being greater than the sum of their parts. Here, Glaspy tears through the best of those tracks, “You & I”, for one of the best performances to have graced Conan’s stage this year.

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4. Pleistocene – Jack-O

For quite some time now, Pleistocene have been favorites of this site. While the band’s currently readying new material, they recently found time to dive into a recent favorite. In this clip, a pared-down version of the band performs a gorgeous, lilting version of “Jack-O”, a highlight from their split with Howlo. Perched on the branch of a tree and cloaked by its leaves with only an omnichord at their disposal, the duo gets swept up in harmonizing and visibly lose themselves in the music they’re creating. It’s a beautiful clip that serves as an able demonstration of the quiet power great art can carry.

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5. Tacocat (PressureDrop.tv)

For the third consecutive Watch This in a row, PressureDrop.tv land an exhilarating entry that finds a way to enhance the common grounds between the featured band and the filmmaking. It’s startlingly effective on the visual front and enhances the frequently propulsive performances at its core. In this instance, Tacocat runs wild on a set that looks like an abandoned shed that was converted into a practice space. The setting mirrors the band’s own fun-loving sensibilities and the band seems to be energized by the space, turning in the kind of confident performance that makes it seem like they feel completely at home.