THE BEST Music

Danger near, danger here! Animator Cyriak is known for his outlandish and trippy visual collages, and they serve as the perfect visual complement to this offbeat track about the end of the world by the enigmatic art rock band Sparks. From the album A Steady Drip Drip Drip.

maromaro1337 is a master of the stylophone, having rocked out covers like Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, AC/DC’s Thunderstruck, and Metallica’s Master of Puppets. Here’s another hard rock classic, Motörhead’s Ace of Spades, played energetically on the simple electronic instruments. Don’t forget the Joker!

Pouff creates moving images using fractal math, and makes their own music to go with. Their YouTube channel is loaded with colorful and hypnotic visuals, like this clip of intricate, organic looking structures, accented by brilliant backlighting.

Video artist and motion designer Theo Tagholm came up with a cool new technique that involves layering repeated images onto each other to create a sort of video echo effect. The ambient soundtrack is by musician Thanasis Christodoulou.

Hey! What a wonderful kind of day! Hot Dad turns the theme song from the PBS Kids show Arthur on its ear, replacing the warm reggae riddims of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers’ original with a moody 1980s synthwave sound. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does.

Rolling Stone’s party game isn’t a traditional music trivia game. Instead, it just requires basic memory of popular music. After a rapid-fire advantage round, players try to figure out a band or musician based on a single word, a lyrical quote, or by humming a tune.

(PG-13: Language) If Trent Reznor was making music during the 1970s, it might have sounded something like this industrial-disco smashup by editor William Maranci, who once again proves that there are no two genres that can’t be combined as Lipps, Inc’s Funkytown and Nine Inch Nails Closer become one.

Peaches come in a can. They were put there by a man, in a factory downtown. Leo Moracchioli dusts of the 1995 Presidents of the U.S.A. hit Peaches, replacing the twangy alt-pop sounds of the original with angry electric guitar, and energetic screams about nature’s candy and some not-so-thinly-veiled sexual innuendo.

Here’s an unusual musical instrument we never heard of before now. Created in the 17th century, the enormous baroque theorbo is basically a lute on steroids. Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and lutenist Elizabeth Kenny explain the history of the theorbo, and provide a sampling of the sounds that it produces.

Musician and blank-starer Seth Everman is an expert at deconstructing songs and figuring out how to replicate them. This time out, he shows us his method for playing The Weeknd’s hit Blinding Lights using his couch, a toilet, and various other things around his house. Naturally, he still needed his keyboard for the ’80s synth bits.

Aerobics videos were one of the hallmarks of 1980s cheese. And while they might have been incredibly campy when set to Olivia Newton-John music, this video shows how they can be improved upon when the choreography lines up with Rob Zombie’s Dragula. It also works well with Superbeast.

Every time we hear the song Rainbow Connection from The Muppet Movie, it gives us the feels. While Jim Henson set the bar high with his original performance, 13-year-old puppeteer Kai and his dad Kelbe Schrank did the song and its creators proud during an event at Aubrey, Texas’ Fortunata Winery.

Jacob Koller goes by the nickname “The Mad Arranger” because he loves to take relatively straightforward pieces of music and amp up the difficulty to 9000. Here, he takes Rossini’s familiar William Tell Overture and turns it into a supremely tricky jazz version. His arrangement of Mission Impossible is worth a listen too.

Designer Isaac Moores (aka Izac Less) created this fun animation which provides typographic lyrics to Madeon’s dance masterpiece Pop Culture, using logo graphics based on just that – pop culture. Don’t know where they’re all from? Watch this version of the clip.

In a bold leaf of faith, Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu opera house staged its first concert since the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown… to a full house of houseplants. The UceLi Quartet performed Giacomo Puccini’s “I Crisantemi” for 2,292 plants, one in every red velvet seat. Conceived by Spanish artist Eugenio Ampudia.

Singer-songwriter M. Ward sits down on his couch for a truly intimate acoustic guitar set that will transport you a kinder and gentler time and place. Along the way, you’ll enjoy classic tracks like Chinese Translation, and new ones like Coyote Mary’s Traveling Show from his 2020 album Migration Stories.

The last time we got a new Portal game was all the way back in 2011, but we still keep hoping that Valve will give us Portal 3 someday. For now, this Portal-inspired machinima parody of Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence from Harry101UK and lyricist Greg Holgate will have to suffice.

Having a tough time waking up and starting your day? Let musician Seb Skelly ease you out of the funk with a cover of The Beatles’ track Here Comes the Sun that starts out slow and smooth, and ramps up into a bright and cheerful ray of light. Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

Despite being under lockdown, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain has been keeping us entertained with a steady series of work from home performances, this time offering up a playful and jaunty cover of The Cure’s 1983 track The Love Cats, with smooth vocals by Laura Currie, who also served as the video’s editor.

We’re already quite familiar with the evolution of Windows sounds. Now listen to a variety of Windows startup, shutdown, and error sounds played on piano, courtesy of Bored Piano, where you can also check out digital piano covers of familiar game console startup sounds. More on his Japanese language channel.

Given all of the horrible news and doomscrolling these days, it’s our pleasure to bring you something a little more cheerful here on The Awesomer, like this guy who sits in the forest dressed like sasquatch, and plays cover songs on the saxophone. We’ve assembled a video playlist of a few of our favorite tunes.

We’ve previously enjoyed pianist Florian Mohr’s medley of hip-hop tunes. Now he’s back with a compilation of 40 themes from cartoon and anime TV series, from Family Guy to The Flintstones, to Spongebob Squarepants, along with a handful of lesser known shows. How many can you name?

Michel Gondry’s music videos, TV shows, and films deftly combine humor, childlike whimsy, and in-camera effects to entertain our brains. In this clip from Polyphonic, essayist Noah LeFevre explains how Gondry’s background as a percussionist has influenced his work through rhythmic, repetitive, and redundant imagery.

Oo-ohh, here he comes… Remixer DJ Cummerbund presents a love letter to Danny Devito’s “Man-Cheetah” from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia with a track that manages to blend Hall and Oates, The Strokes, The White Stripes, and Chris Isaak into a deliciously spicy bowl of musical gumbo.

This 31-track cover album pays tribute to the late Adam Schlesinger, with a sampling of some of his many wonderful power pop tracks. The Fountains of Wayne songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist passed away in April 2020 due to COVID-19. All proceeds from the album go to benefit MusiCares’ COVID-19 Relief Fund.

Chili’s “I Want My Baby Back (Ribs)” is one of the most memorable jingles ever associated with a brand. Now go inside one of the tune’s recordings session courtesy of singer Alvin Chea of Take 6, along with Louis Price of The Temptations, and the late Willie McCoy aka “Wolf Johnson.” Does anyone want a half slab tonight?