Waking up in HANOI

The pleasure of a languid, early film scene set to diegetic pop music is hard to match, in my book. The Vietnamese film THE VERTICAL RAY OF THE SUN features three such sequences, repeated in the same bedroom at morning to different songs.

In this scene, LOU REED's 1970's single CONEY ISLAND BABY sets the tone for filmmaker TRAN ANH HUNG's carefully orchestrated wake up scene.

NITE JEWEL is not an alien, or maybe

This is one of those lo-fi druggy vids that just stick in my mind. The syrupy groove to NITE JEWEL's dance track ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is irresistible. It's the kind of thing that, at first, you think it's a joke—until you realize that Ms. JEWEL is just from another planet.

The NITE JEWEL record is out now on ITALIANS DO IT BETTER.