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While wading through a sea of #earthquake tweets this afternoon, I noticed that a teaser trailer for Tom Waits’ recently announced Bad As Me had popped into my Twitter feed. After watching the clever, Electronic Age-bashing clip, I couldn’t help but think of how popular album trailers have become. What makes Waits’ short preview so funny is that it embodies two completely contradictory messages: it slyly critiques the fact that album release dates have lost almost all of their meaning due to YouTube videos and torrent sites, but engages in these medias just as whole-heartedly as those who are sure to scour the Internet from now until October 25th in search of leaked copies of new Waits material. As is to be expected with any monumental Ton Waits news, the video spread like wildfire across blogs and music news publications. I myself felt the need to alert the online public. And here again, the video proves to be effective, inspiring not just one, but two post on Tri-State Indie’s homepage. With all of this having been said, I’d like to introduce the top 5 most memorable album trailers of the year so far. All of these videos have been chosen for different reasons, whether they be humorous, thought provoking, or excitement inducing, but each has been chosen for its impeccable ability to represent its respective album well:

5. Feist – Metals (#5)

Though Feist released several videos in anticipation of her new album, Metals, Number 5 is the most enthralling. It features some of the most upbeat music to be previewed from the album to date, as well as gives an interesting look into the Canadian songstress’s recording (and presumably living) space. It’s shakily filmed, charmingly handheld shots are more enveloping than one would expect from a video with a runtime of less than a minute:

4. St. Vincent – Strange Mercy (# 3)
St. Vincent is another artist whose flooded the internet with teaser trailers linked to her forthcoming release. While many of the videos advertising Strange Mercy are pretty entertaining, there’s one that stands out as superior (and one that stands out as less than so). The clip features several women letting their boyfriends down easy, including one particularly attractive women reassuring that, “A lot of people cry after sex”:

3. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

M83′s clip for Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is one of the most visually striking on our list. It’s goes from very simplistic to very emotive in seconds, beginning in M83 leader Anthony Gonzalez’s home studio, and quickly transitioning to sprawling shots of nature scenes and city skylines. The video’s constant movement compliments M83′s synth-pop sounds perfectly:

2. Wilco – The Whole Love

Unlike the other selections on this list, the trailer for The Whole Love gives very little incite as to how the finished album will actually sound. Rather than giving snippets of completed, full-recording, the trailer focuses on ambient keyboard drones and noisy guitar freak-outs. In fact, only one word from singer Jeff Tweedy can be heard throughout the entirety of the video: “Almost.” The trailer sets the band an a more experimental light than they have recently been associated with, one that harkens back to their mid career offers such as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born:

1. Ton Waits – Bad As Me

This one pretty much speaks for itself (not to mention the fact that it already received a full write-up of sorts in this article’s introduction):