Watch: Videos from Echosmith, Polartropica and Half•Alive

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Echosmith (Photo by Nightdove Studios)

Catching up with recent videos from Echosmith, Polartropica and Half•Alive …

ECHOSMITH, “Gelato”

What’s for dessert? Sibling trio Echosmith — Sydney, Noah and Graham Sierota — check in with “Gelato,” the follow-up to June’s single “Hang Around” and the band’s new version of “Cool Kids,” released in September. The new single is an edgy pop-rocker like “Hang Around,” but … “Gelato / fresh like Boulder, Colorado” might be a reach, even if we’d move there in a heartbeat. They advocate for seizing the moment, though — “We came to thrill so fill your cup” — so have a spoonful. Echosmith plays the El Rey Theatre on Thursday.

POLARTROPICA, “What’s Your Fantasy”

As she did with her early-2022 release “Give Them Hell (Serial Killer Slayer),” dream-pop artist Ihui Cherise Wu — aka Polartropica — invites you into a strange netherworld for “What’s Your Fantasy,” this one full of goth-faerie vampires. The lavish video, a tribute to the aesthetic of L.A.’s queer and trans community, is a twist on “Alice in Wonderland.” Filmed at the downtown speakeasy The Obscure, it was directed by Vanessa Marzaroli, who also did the set design.

HALF•ALIVE, “High Up”

Long beach trio Half•Alive (OK, half•alive) announced the Dec. 2 arrival of their sophomore album, “Conditions a Punk,” by releasing the spectacularly choreographed video for “Did I Make You Up?” last month. Now they’re back with “High Up,” which older listeners might think is Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” on Pixy Stix. The album, which includes the seven tracks on “Give Me Your Shoulders Pt. 1,” released in February, spans 18 tracks and figures to do nothing to diminish the trio’s status as pop darlings. “‘High Up’ is a love song about killing the projected idea of love in exchange for what it actually is,” says frontman Josh Taylor, who co-directed the video with Kevin Clark. “Both of us [felt] drawn to the visual of a car driving through rain-soaked streets in the middle of L.A., like a downpour of emotion, flooding the streets of my mind, begging me to react to it. … Within two weeks we were on set watching a rain machine dump water on my 1980s Mercedes as 30 friends of mine run circles around it. Somehow, I convinced them it would be a good time.”