Why Make Sense? Hot Chip's Weirdest Video Clips

From I Feel Better to Ready For The Floor, we go through Hot Chip's strangest video clips as they kick off an Australian tour.

Posted By Pile Rats 9 years ago

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Hot Chip's Australia tour is about to start this Friday and with our own team DJing at the Perth leg of the shows, we thought we would bring together some of Hot Chip's more interesting video clips. Furthermore, the release of their sixth album Why Make Sense? makes it the perfect time to dig through their back catalogue and polish off some of the videos that we loved despite not quite understanding what was going on. Because as Hot Chip says, why make sense?

I Feel Better

When talking weird video clips, it's hard to go past the video Hot Chip's 2010 single I Feel Better. The video clip starts of by pointing fun at your Backstreet Boys-esque boy bands, but quickly turns weird when a creature reminiscent of Mr Burns in The Simpsons' X-Files episode kills the four members of the band using lasers emitting from his mouth. After reemerging as a quintet, the video kicks the bizarreness up a notch with the introduction of a large floating head, who mows down the actual Hot Chip cameoing as show attendees.

Over And Over

One of my first experiences listening to Hot Chip was in a north Indian hostel when I was 14 years old and Over And Over was one of tracks I heard. So when I got round to watching the video I was positively frothing at the mouth because of the mash-up of guitars and electronic beats. So after the first viewing I was so confused. The first few watches I felt they had actually just forgotten to get the video guy to do the CGI properly and just danced around in front of a green screen for nothing. But I kind of loved the idea at the same time because it just seemed so out there to 14-year-old me.

Boy From School

Boy From School sees the Hot Chip boys set up an Ancient Greek-themed school play, art-attack style. The video has gained quite a few fans since being featured in an episode of The Simpsons, and sports covers from Grizzly Bear and Tears For Fears. Anyway, compared to some of Hot Chip's other videos, Boy From School is pretty tame but it's still a really rad video.

Ready For The Floor

My mother used to complain whenever I played this video on the home computer because she felt sick looking the camera jerkily running in and out. So when I could play this video there was something about the whole half suit / half joker look that I loved. Mainly because I was going through a phase of trying to work out how you could wear two different pieces of clothing as one. Sadly this trend never happened because I couldn't get enough money to buy two different suits and then ruin them.

One Life Stand

The 2009 video for One Life Stand sees the band perform the single in a tiny room, filmed in the reflection of a silver ball hanging from the ceiling. It's not as much of a big-budget video clip compared to some of their others, but watching Hot Chip horse around in a tiny-ass square room filmed from weird angles is actually heaps cooler than it sounds, believe it or not.

Need You Now

While it isn't the strangest video that Hot Chip has put out (that definitely goes to I Feel Better), the clip for Need You Now just draws you in. It does this by worming into your consciousness and looking at how we chase an image of ourselves at the end of a failed relationship to try keep it going. It's unsettlingly not because of the actions but because it's true. It's definitely a video to watch.