Music videos with Halloween vibes

None are "Thriller." Come on. We all know "Thriller" by now.

Allison Driskill

30 Oct 2019 • 3 min read

Oh boy do I love music videos. I love ’em so much! I’ll take any excuse to talk about music videos, and this, the most spooktacular time of the year, certainly counts as an excuse. If you’re planning a Halloween party, you could put this playlist on mute on your TV and have a nice creepy ambiance all night long.

I’ve tried to exclude super obvious choices here — we all know and love “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” — but will definitely miss some good ones, so drop your favorite spooky video in the comments!

Genre: Gothic horror

MGMT has a serious knack for creating worlds with their music videos. My college roommate and I often talked about throwing a wild hippie party inspired by their psychedelic “Electric Feel” video. I would go a step further with their “Little Dark Age” clip, and straight-up live in it if I could. I would wear dark lipstick and marry Andrew VanWynGarden in his Robert Smith drag if he would take me as his pale spooky bride. I don’t even like spooky things that much! I’m not really one of those people! I just get so swept up in the feel of this video!

I don’t want to marry anyone involved in this. For this post, I’m mostly omitting the entire swath of emo videos from the early-aughts peak Hot Topic era, because we could make an entire list just from those bands. But I’m so amused by the extent to which blink-182 did The Most here, committing to a video that matches the absurdity of the song itself. CATCHEENG THEENGS AND EATING THEIR INSOIDS!

Phoebe’s first of two appearances on this list. Imagine projecting this on a wall at a Halloween party. It’d be the best!

Genre: skeletons

Well, obviously. I firmly believe this is the best thing Tim Burton has done since the 90s! (Yes, I have considered the other video he directed for them, which stars WINONA RYDER, and yet I still do not think it is as good.)

Brilliant in concept and execution. Run the Jewels knows that the scariest thing of all is the real world.

Genre: vampires

“Kill V. Maim” is one of the best songs of the century. Hands down. Conceived as a theme song for an imagined gangster movie about girl vampires, it’s a wild, innovative work that morphs into a different, better song every 10 seconds. The Art Angels song and its video represent the absolute best of Grimes — her visual art background, her use of sci-fi and fantasy elements, her love of pop, and her serious, truly killer production skills.

Here’s an alternative to swap in if you want something a little less bloody. Are we all aware that Aly & AJ are making fantastic synth-pop these days? Really solid, Carly Rae Jepseny 80s-inspired bops? Get on that if you haven’t.

(I suppose I should mention Fall Out Boy’s “A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me” video here. It’s so silly! My brother and I have made fun of Pete Wentz’s vampire-teeth-garbled “You call yourthelveth hunterth” line delivery ever since this video was released in 2005, so I have had 14 solid years of not taking this video seriously. That’s half my life! Your personal mileage may vary.)