When 'Clueless' hit theatres in 1995, it defined a generation’s idea of cool. Amy Heckerling’s pastel-bright satire of Beverly Hills with its candy-coloured world of high school hijinks, and fashion-forward characters proved that a teen comedy could be as self-aware as it was stylish. Two decades later, Iggy Azalea’s 'Fancy' resurrected that universe in its three an a half-minute music video. Shot at the same Los Angeles high school where 'Clueless' filmed, it recreated entire scenes from the movie — the classroom debate, the driving lesson, the locker-lined hallways, with Iggy stepping into Cher Horowitz’s designer heels. Over 250 extras were styled in ‘90s prep-school looks sourced from vintage racks across L.A., and the production team spent weeks colour-matching the original film’s saturated palette of yellows, pastels, and plaids.

The craft that goes into making a music video memorable stems from a culture that that MTV has nurtured over its 43-year run. While several of its international editions prepare to sign off, the channel’s legacy continues — especially in India — where its influence still shapes how we see and hear music. It endures in how artists today approach the art form as a space for worldbuilding, experimentation, imaginative storytelling. Here are six homegrown music videos that carry that lineage forward — inventive, intentional, and alive with possibilities.

After collaborating with Hanumankind on some of their biggest global hits, Bijoy Shetty returns with 'Taare Bindigeya' by Sanjith Hegde — an homage to the legendary mime artist Jogesh Dutta, who is credited as the architect of modern Indian mime, through visual language he called Mukabhinay. Shot entirely in black and white, the video borrows from German Expressionism, using sharp contrasts, confined spaces, and dramatic framing to reflect Dutta’s inner world. His expressions and body movements form the dialogue, capturing the drama, humour, and empathy that defined his art. Featuring licensed footage from the 1983 Films Division documentary 'The Silent Art', Shetty’s interpretation traces the contours of a life lived through gesture.

In the music video for Saddam Hussainé, shauharty stages an Indian-spaghetti-western fantasy laced with acid-dream visuals to critique the influencer-industrial complex. Set in Jaisalmer and directed by Sheikh Zaid Bin Naseer, it follows bounty hunter Farookh as he tracks the mythic figure Saddam Hussainé, in a commentary on the performative identity at play in the modern social-media era. The video's palette borrows Sergio Leone’s dusty roads and saturated browns, while its metaphors lay bare how ego, artifice and power interweave. The track itself confronts “the unaddressed narcissism of a loser” and how the need to be seen warps the self.

Set in the parallel universe of Neo-Bombay, KALA PANI by Poetic Justis unfolds as a full-length animated music film where a musician’s pursuit of fame leads him into the murky underworld of ambition and artistic obsession. He uncovers the mystery of missing artists across India, all linked to Kala Pani — a drink that grants strange abilities to creative minds. Created by two animation teams, Gumblue Studio and Studio Zeng, the film draws from the visual language of cyberpunk and Indian futurism. With over sixty collaborators shaping its sound, visuals, and design, KALA PANI expands the idea of what an Indian music video can be — a cinematic, animated narrative that pushes the boundaries of independent art and storytelling.

Dreamhour and Dokodoko’s new single and music video pushes their sound into harsher, unrestrained territory, trading synth-pop gloss for abrasive textures that hit as hard as the imagery they conjure. 'Human Ideal' and its feverish, VFX-driven video rail against environmental collapse, corruption, and a world undone by misaligned priorities, crystallized in the biting refrain: “How could someone in their right mind fuck this up?” with body horror and glitch core visuals, the music video is shot on a shoestring budget but rendered with a surreal, trippy vision, it marks Dreamhour’s pivot into a genre-fluid v2.0 — an experimental phase that trades nostalgia for decay and disorder.

The music video for ‘Pissed Off’ by Yashraj and NEVERSOBER is a chaotic, razor-sharp visual statement on the intersection of satire and rebellion. Directed by Bhagyesh Rajeshirke with creative direction from Yashraj himself, it unfolds like a surreal fever dream — a mix of science fiction, social critique, and pure visual anarchy. The narrative follows a mad scientist attempting to implant the “3P chip” into Yashraj’s brain, triggering a cascade of hyper-real, absurd sequences that mirror the artist’s mental unrest. Through bold colour palettes, and biting visual metaphors, the video skewers everything from political hypocrisy and censorship to corporate control and public outrage with a fun cameo from som. Between references to industry pressures, online hate, and creative struggle, Pissed Off is a wild, cinematic plunge into the psyche of an artist.

The music video for ‘Tamils on the Roof’, directed by Soham Kundu in collaboration with Duo Films, extends the introspection of the track into a visual meditation on conflict and control. Shot against the expanse of the English countryside, the video places Arshaq Malik in a game of chess against a visibly frustrated opponent as a symbolic confrontation between composure and chaos. The chessboard becomes a metaphor for Malik’s inner negotiation: strategic, and deliberate, but undercut by emotional volatility. Visually minimal yet psychologically dense, 'Tamils on the Roof' captures the exhaustion of keeping it together, examining Malik’s self-destructive coping mechanisms.

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