Best synth pop music videos 2021

Picture-perfect music videos in another pandemic year

At the end of January 2021, I only had the music video 'Intruder' by 'Gary Numan' in my list for the best synth pop music videos 2021 (plus related genres) and thought: "Oh, this is going to be a weak year". Fortunately, it didn't stop there and over the course of the year, more and more gems came to light expo­nen­tially. In the end, we awar­ded a total of 30 music videos (from 375 in total) as the best in 2021.

During the pan­dem­ic, many artists were forced to record music videos at home because there was no oth­er way. Music videos in video con­fer­ence style in front of the web­cam or dir­ectly from the liv­ing room were not uncom­mon in 2021. But some have man­aged to pro­duce fant­ast­ic visu­al worlds even in these dif­fi­cult times. And there are not only big names in the scene, but also many smal­ler bands and artists who have cre­ated some­thing beau­ti­ful with a lot of cre­ativ­ity and pas­sion.

The best synth pop music videos 2021 in no ranking order

Gary Numan – Intruder

Chris Corner (IAMX) has pre­vi­ously pro­duced a num­ber of 'Gary Numan' music videos, includ­ing the visu­al mas­ter­pieces 'I Am Dust' and 'My Name Is Ruin'. With the music video 'Intruder' taken from the same-titled album 'Intruder' Chris Corner proves that you can cre­ate excit­ing images with a simple arrange­ment. The effects are reduced to light and shad­ow and pur­pose­fully applied blur effects.

Another great music video in 2021 from Gary Numan is: Saints and Liars

The Mobile Homes – Via Dolorosa

The offi­cial music video ‘Via Dolorosa’ per­formed by ‘The Mobile Homes’ taken from the album ‘Trigger’. With few resources, an icon­ic video has been cre­ated that 'Anton Corbijn' could not have done bet­ter. As simple as the idea is that the sing­er wanders through the land­scape with a really heavy ana­logue syn­thes­iser, it is also ingeni­ous. Visually gloomy and very desat­ur­ated, the look fits the mel­an­chol­ic song perfectly.

Black Nail Cabaret – Maelstrom

Official music video ‘Maelstrom’ per­formed by ‘Black Nail Cabaret’ taken from the album ‘Gods Verging On Sanity‘. Video by Richard Besenczi. End time atmo­sphere, a post apo­ca­lyptic look and mov­ing through a bizarre land­scape with breath­ing masks present the band's release of 'Maelstrom'. The zeit­geist is per­fectly cap­tured visu­ally here. The music video was filmed in the Geological Park in Gant, Hungary.

Fall Shock – Nude Grace

Official music video ‘Nude Grace’ per­formed by ‘Fall Shock’ taken from the album ‘Interior’. Director: Edoardo Bocchi. The music video for 'Nude Grace' is like a weird sci-fi trip with a time loop. If you haven't seen the video yet, I hope I haven't spoiled too much. I'm not sure if it's a time loop or a men­tal dis­order (dis­so­ci­at­ive iden­tity dis­order) that's being dealt with here. Just write me your opin­ion about the video of 'Nude Grace' in the com­ments.

Omnimar – Feels Like Velvet

Official music video ‘Feels Like Velvet’ per­formed by ‘Omnimar’ taken from the album ‘Darkpop‘. With the music video for 'Feels Like Velvet', you can almost speak of a clas­sic mix of goth­ic and pop imagery. In one part, the sing­er Maria Mar walks through a forest with fire, dressed in black goth­ic clothes. I love the idea of spheres with spikes hanging around in the forest, which remind me of a mace or small water mines.

The second part takes place on the beach with cliffs. This is where the pop vari­ant comes into play in terms of visu­als. The clothes and the light set­ting cre­ate a clear contrast.

Kiberspassk – Kikimora

Official music video ‘Kikimora’ per­formed by ‘Kiberspassk’ taken from the album ‘See Bear’. I have to admit that I per­son­ally can't really deal with the music of the Russian band 'Kiberspassk'. It's just a bit too stress­ful for me. But it's elec­tron­ic, it freshens up the scene a bit and, above all, it's ori­gin­al. The band's music videos are also a feast for the eyes. This is also the case with the video for the song 'Kikimora'. Great cos­tumes and film sequences like from a hor­ror film accom­pany the song.

The band was already hon­oured last year for their video for 'Derevna' in our art­icle 'Best Synth Pop music videos 2020'. Therefore, con­grat­u­la­tions for a repeated placement.

Formalin – Faded

Official music video ‘Faded’ per­formed by ‘Formalin’ taken from the album ‘Love And Nihilism‘. Video dir­ec­ted, filmed and edited by Formalin. As with Kiberspassk, I have to admit that I per­son­ally don't like the dir­ec­tion in which Formalin is devel­op­ing music­ally. The very strong met­al genre impact just doesn't meet my taste. Vera, how­ever, is on fire with the new Formalin sound.

But this is about the best music videos of 2021, and I think it's oblig­at­ory that Formalin is included here. Thomas Liebchen is a cre­at­ive geni­us when it comes to visu­al con­tent. Whether it's cine­mat­ic images or graph­ic con­cepts. I liked 'Faded' visu­ally the best in 2021. The idea is not ground­break­ing, but very well realised.

Other great music video in 2021 from Formalin are: Tear Down My Prison and Devil

Czarina – Wonderland

Offical music video ‘Wonderland’ per­formed by ‘Czarina’. Directed by Deliris Films and The Kitsunes. 'Czarina' hasn't been in the arena for too long, but with almost every video she proves what can be achieved with a lot of cre­ativ­ity. With each new music video, she cre­ates unique real­it­ies and moods through unusu­al cos­tumes and great visu­al worlds. I am visu­ally very impressed by this artist.

Czarina was already awar­ded last year in the art­icle 'Best Synth Pop music videos 2020' for her video to The Cure cov­er 'Burn'.

Other great music video in 2021 from Czarina are: Atomic: Ad Initivm and Medusa

Ashbury Heights – One Trick Pony (Feat. Massive Ego)

Official music video ‘One Trick Pony (Feat. Massive Ego)’ per­formed by ‘Ashbury Heights’. Together with 'Massive Ego', 'Ashbury Heights' just dropped a club hit at the begin­ning of 2021. With night clubs in oper­a­tion, the suc­cess would cer­tainly have been even great­er. The col­lab­or­a­tion wasn't just lim­ited to the song. During the pan­dem­ic, the two bands pro­duced this really cool music video at dif­fer­ent loc­a­tions. However, at the end they man­aged to make the dif­fer­ent shots form a har­mo­ni­ous and homo­gen­eous unit.

Maybe I'm just ima­gin­ing it, but I think you can see the exuber­ant fun of the prot­ag­on­ists in their eyes in almost every shot of the music video. And that's exactly what makes the video so worth watch­ing and so sym­path­et­ic. It's not just the music that is presen­ted in a visu­ally com­pel­ling way. No, the spe­cial thing here seems to be the spon­taneity and some­what haphaz­ard act­ing. Well done!

Rein – Reincarnated

Official music video ‘Reincarnated’ per­formed by ‘REIN’ taken from the same-titled album ‘Reincarnated‘. 'REIN' released a music video of epic dimen­sions in 2021 with 'Reincarnated'. Whereby the word­ing 'music video' is actu­ally not really accur­ate. This is more like com­pos­ite dysto­pi­an sci-fi music­al short film sequences.

The video includes vari­ous songs from the album 'Reincarnated' and has a play­ing time of 7:43 minutes. For us older people, that doesn't sound too long, but for the TikTok gen­er­a­tion, it feels like an etern­ity. But don't worry! So much hap­pens in the video that the time flies by. Absolutely worth see­ing and a truly high­light of the best synth pop music videos 2021.

Yelle – Noir

Official music video ‘Noir’ per­formed by ‘Yelle’ taken from the album “L’Ère du Verseau”. Directed by Giant. The music video with the highest art claim in 2021 prob­ably deserves 'YELLE' for their visu­al­isa­tion to the song 'Noir'. Great cos­tumes and a clear visu­al lan­guage define this video. Including an icon­ic sig­na­ture move à la Madonna (Vogue Style) at the end of the music video.

Dlina Volny – Bipolar

Official music video for the dark pop / syn­thwave track ‘Bipolar’ per­formed by ‘Dlina Volny’. Director: Sasha Komisarov. That I found the young band 'Dlina Volny' was more of a happy coin­cid­ence. Since the end of February 2021, I have been accept­ing songs almost exclus­ively via Submithub. 'Dlina Volny' applied via Submithub and I was imme­di­ately enthu­si­ast­ic. The music video 'Bipolar' is a visu­al hit that plays with the theme of par­al­lel worlds with really strong images. The col­ours and film­ing are excel­lent and really pro­fes­sion­ally done.

Another great music video in 2021 from Dlina Volny is: Tomorrow

The Brides Of The Black Room – Fire Disciple

Official music video for the synth pop song ‘Fire Disciple’ per­formed by ‘The Brides Of The Black Room’. Music video by EroGuru. The music video is a one-shot record­ing of a night walk where more and more hap­pens in the frame. A really visu­ally stun­ning music video, which requires a lot of plan­ning, rehears­als and dis­cip­line. But the res­ult is impress­ive and we hon­our it here.

Cold Cave – Prayer From Nowhere

Official music video for the dark wave song ‘Prayer From Nowhere’ per­formed by ‘Cold Cave’. Taken from the album ‘Fate In Seven Lessons’. The visu­al lan­guage lets every 'Depeche Mode' fan imme­di­ately recog­nise which role mod­el was the inspir­a­tion here. We're talk­ing about 'Anton Corbijn', who sig­ni­fic­antly shaped the visu­al style of 'Depeche Mode' at the end of the 80s and raised it to a high­er level. We are talk­ing here mainly about the music videos of 'Strangelove', 'Never Let Me Down Again' and 'Behind The Wheel'.

Here the style, with less coarse-grained record­ing tech­nique, has been imple­men­ted mag­ni­fi­cently and fits per­fectly to the song which some­how also has an 80s dark wave touch. Compliments and respect from my side.

Kat Von D – Exorcism

Official music video for the goth­ic / synth pop song ‘Exorcism’ per­formed by ‘Kat Von D’ taken from the album ‘Love Made Me Do It‘. 'Kat Von D' totally blew my mind in 2021. "Wow, what a per­form­ance!". Musically, abso­lutely fant­ast­ic. I adore the album 'Love Made Me Do It'. First of all, thank you very much for this bril­liant and mel­an­choly album in 2021.

With all the music videos 'Kat Von D' released in 2021, I actu­ally had a hard time decid­ing which one to hon­our here. But I decided on the first single 'Exorcism'. The story has a fant­ast­ic and humor­ous twist, the band (or crew) is intro­duced one after the oth­er and the group pic­ture in the music video is remin­is­cent of some kind of (goth­ic) super­hero scene. For me, really one of the high­lights of 2021 and def­in­itely a deserved award in the best synth pop music videos 2021. Please, please with a lot of sug­ar on top: Keep going!

Other great music videos in 2021 from Kat Von D are: I Am Nothing, Enough and Fear You

Reakton – Nano

Official music video for the Electro song ‘Nano’ per­formed by ‘Reakton’ taken from the album ‘micro:macro:nano’. What could be more fit­ting for a min­im­al elec­tro / techno pop song inspired by 'Kraftwerk' than to pro­duce a music video with 3D graph­ics? The 3D aes­thet­ic is more 70s or 80s, but with more up-to-date graph­ics. At least the first time I watched the video, I was almost hypnotised.

Blutengel – Wir Sind Das Licht

Official music video for the synth pop song ‘Wir Sind Das Licht’ per­formed by ‘Blutengel’ taken from the album ‘Erlösung – The Victory Of Light’. Directed by Nils Freiwald.

Malicious tongues say that Blutengel always pulls the clichéd Gothic card. But I find that a bit exag­ger­ated. Of course the set­ting of Blutengel is fixed, but in most cases it is really amaz­ing and cred­ible. I per­son­ally like the mar­ket­ing and present­a­tion of the band and think that the song 'Wir Sind Das Licht' is the band's best music video of 2021. Well chosen loc­a­tions, fant­ast­ic light­ing, sexy dan­cing goth girls and a simple, clas­sic music video story. What more could you want?

Mixina – Sospira

Official music video ‘Sospira’ per­formed by Spainish artist ‘Mixina’. If you know the disco scene from the movie 'Blade' (1998), then you already know what's going to hap­pen here in the video. Maybe not with the amount of blood and more subtle, because it has to fit into the small budget. But what the band has achieved here visu­ally with few resources is quite respectable.

Not My God – Ashes

Official music video ‘Ashes’ per­formed by ‘Not My God’ taken from the album ‘Simulacra’. Directed by Vicente Cordero / Industrialism Films. The sound of the song 'Ashes' is min­im­al, but abso­lutely bru­tal in terms of intens­ity. The video is just stuffed full of hyp­not­ising images, col­our­fully por­tray­ing icy cold and hell all at once. With a lot of blas­phem­ous sym­bol­ism, the video is also not recom­men­ded for everyone.

The edit­ing and the video effects are per­fectly matched to the song and are used so dis­creetly that they do not become bor­ing. You remain cap­tiv­ated and don't want to miss the devel­op­ment towards the end. Best evil music video 2021!

Dana Dentata – Apology

Official music video ‘Apology’ per­formed by ‘Dana Dentata’ taken from the album ‘Pantychrist’. Director: Kathleen Dycaico. In our art­icle "A begin­ners' SEO guide for musi­cians to rank high on YouTube" I show, among oth­er things, how import­ant it is to use an excit­ing thumb­nail for your music video. Maybe not about our art­icle, but this is what 'Dana Dentata' did per­fectly for her music video for 'Apology'.

This video was sug­ges­ted to me on YouTube and in the over­view of a lot of videos I got visu­ally glued to it. So I listened to the song, thought it was good and pub­lished it on our site. A well-designed stage, a pinch of sex and an inter­est­ing cam­era per­spect­ive are the keys to suc­cess here. The dark pop sound is nice and crisp and com­pletes the over­all pic­ture. As you can see, fol­low simple rules of online mar­ket­ing and SEO and you get a place on the best synth pop music videos 2021.

Lucy Dreams – Silver Lines

Official music video ‘Silver Lines’ per­formed by ‘Lucy Dreams’. Strong black and white con­trast and many geo­met­ric shapes make this music video visu­ally strong. The set­ting and the style seem to me like a music video from the 80s with the pos­sib­il­it­ies of today.

Extreme cool cos­tumes and a glasses visor from the 3D print­ing machine show real pas­sion here to leave a visu­al impres­sion. And indeed, the band has man­aged to do that for me. After watch­ing it for the first time, it was abso­lutely clear to me that the music video belongs in the art­icle 'Best synth pop music videos 2021'.

Ama B. – The One Thing (INXS Cover)

Official music video ‘The One Thing (INXS Cover)’ per­formed by ‘Ama B.’. Ama B. seems to really love the INXS song 'The One Thing'. Besides pro­du­cing this pas­sion­ate cov­er, she also ded­ic­ated the offi­cial INXS music video to it. Although in her black cos­tume and the keytar she rather reminds me of one of the ladies from the music video 'Addicted To Love' by 'Robert Palmer'. But both songs are from the same time peri­od. Maybe it's not a coin­cid­ence after all?

Onuka – Guma

Official music video for the elec­tro song ‘Guma’ per­formed by ‘Onuka’ taken from the album ‘Kolir’. Today, it is no longer tech­nic­ally com­plic­ated or expens­ive to clone your­self digit­ally mul­tiple times. But you still need a lot of dif­fer­ent shots and if you let the digit­al clones inter­act with each oth­er, it's still excit­ing to see in a music video. The set­ting is remin­is­cent of a 70s sci-fi film like Clockwork Orange or THX 1138. What can I say? Simply very well real­ised and a well-deserved men­tion in the best synth pop music videos 2021.

Massive Ego – You Will Comply

Official music video ‘You Will Comply’ per­formed by ‘Massive Ego’, which is a hymn to the epi­dem­ic gen­er­a­tion and the world’s present real­ity. I have been eagerly fol­low­ing the set up and pre­par­a­tion for the video shoot on Massive Ego's social media chan­nels. The band puts a lot of effort into mak­ing videos with strong visu­als and I have nev­er been dis­ap­poin­ted so far. 'You Will Comply' is no excep­tion. A super pro­fes­sion­al look per­fectly real­ised on a small budget. The brain fry­er could have been taken from a 50s sci-fi movie set. I love this scene!

BTW: The cov­er art­work concept of the pre­vi­ous releases 'You Will Comply', 'Dead Eyes Black' and the EP 'The New Normal' are to die for. The same goes for the new Massive Ego (ME) logo. Simplistic and just bril­liant. And I know how hard it is to cre­ate some­thing so icon­ic. Personally, I've been try­ing to make a signet for Electrozombies for over 10 years now. I have thou­sands of ideas in my sketch books, but so far I haven't been able to decide on a signet yet. Damn per­fec­tion­ism. Love you guys!

Another great music video in 2021 from Massive Ego is: Dead Eyes Black

Aesthetic Perfection – Bark at the Moon

Official music video for the dark wave / synth pop song ‘Bark at the Moon’ per­formed by ‘Aesthetic Perfection’. Director and Editor: Chad Michael Ward. Aesthetic Perfection's music videos are all visu­al gems in the scene. I don't think any­one has any doubts about that fact. Personally, I am not a fan of Daniel's concept of pro­du­cing only Singles. The eco­nom­ic strategy behind it is 100% clear to me. And also that the songs from the "12 songs in 12 months" pro­ject will be released on an album was clear to me from the beginning.

However, I found it a pity and was a little wor­ried that Daniel Graves no longer dared to make music videos, since the most elab­or­ate and expens­ive video 'Ebb And Flow' was a com­mer­cial flop from his point of view. I had cel­eb­rated the music video, so I was all the more pleased that from my point of view the best song of 2021 got such a great music video. Thanks for that.

But now Daniel has to be strong. The worst music video also goes to Aesthetic Perfection. And my "music video pickle" goes to (drum roll): Lonesome Ghosts. I find Christmas songs, no mat­ter what kind, gen­er­ally ter­rible and the act­ing in the video … sorry Daniel. But I love you anyway.

Josie Pace / Sammi Doll – Pure Morning (Placebo Cover)

Official music video ‘Pure Morning (Placebo Cover)’ per­formed by ‘Josie Pace / Sammi Doll’. The music video 'Pure Morning' is a wild video col­lage with many lay­ers that always cross­fade each oth­er. In between, typo­graphy designs of the lyr­ics and stress­ful back­grounds and graph­ics are always inter­spersed. The col­ours of the video are kept rather subtle, so that the whole thing fits into a concept. I love this cov­er ver­sion of the Placebo clas­sic and also the visu­al real­isa­tion of the accom­pa­ny­ing music video.

Juno Francis – Hey You Goodbye Me

The offi­cial music video 'Hey You Goodbye Me' per­formed by 'Juno Francis' is dir­ec­ted by Emmet-Holmes Boyes. The video is a story music video as it was still com­mon in the 80s. Well, let's say a mod­ern inter­pret­a­tion of it. The story goes: hotel room, car ride, suit­case deliv­ery, car ride, hotel room, mys­ter­i­ous suit­case con­tents, ambush and end. A clas­sic crime story per­formed in a few pic­tures, over­laid with a warm col­our tone. The  song is a catchy elec­tro pop / synth pop tune with a mel­an­chol­ic under­tone. Congrats to our entry of the best synth pop music videos 2021.

Rector Scanner – Das Mädchen Aus Dem All

Official music video for the min­im­al elec­tro song ‘Das Mädchen Aus Dem All’ (The Girl From Outer Space) per­formed by ‘Rector Scanner’. Video by Thomas Jordan. I think this is already my third ref­er­ence to the video artist and design­er 'Anton Corbijn'. That's because the video reminds me a lot of 'Headhunter' by 'Front 242'. Pretty cool per­spect­ives and loc­a­tions make the shown big city seem com­pletely empty and surreal.

Another video that shows that you can cre­ate fant­ast­ic worlds without much effort if you are a cre­at­ive mind. Or at least a believ­able illu­sion can be cre­ated. There's no awk­ward act­ing going on here. The pass­ive atti­tudes of the char­ac­ters in the video are well real­ised and that is quite enough. Splendidly executed!

The Brute: – Driving To You

Official music video ‘Driving To You’ per­formed by ‘The Brute:’. Directed by Daniel Gierke. The video 'Driving To You' by Daniel Gierke is in a league of its own. Shot in the best 4k quality, the video shows an agent's story in terms of con­tent. As well as this is real­ised, the video seems to have been taken from an offi­cial James Bond soundtrack. The shots that show the story do not need to hide from a Hollywood block­buster. The col­our grad­ing is extremely juicy and cre­ates a unique visu­al world. The cuts are very well paced and always offer enough vari­ety between the footage.

Faderhead – All Black Everything

Official music video ‘All Black Everything’ per­formed by ‘Faderhead’ taken from the album ‘Years Of The Serpent’. Produced, dir­ec­ted & edited by Faderhead. For me, even before the premiere of the music video, it was very enter­tain­ing to see Sami Mark ask­ing for snakes, fire eat­ers, dan­cers and sim­il­ar on his social media chan­nels. This nat­ur­ally raised the expect­a­tions for the video. But respect what he has put togeth­er here. Maybe even one of the best videos in his career so far.

The scenery or hall with the tri­angle of neon lights is just pure epic. Bonus point for this! The green col­our grad­ing á la Matrix is also on point and cre­ates a gloomy mood. The story "Evil from the myter­i­ous box". Well, I'd say it fits for a music video. Overall, though, the music video is fant­ast­ic and fits like a glove.

Do you think we missed a beautiful synth pop music video in 2021?

Please leave us a line in the com­ment sec­tion below. We are curi­ous about your favour­ite music video(s) in 2021.

Don’t be selfish and share the best synth pop music videos of 2021!

We really would appre­ci­ate, if you would share this post and spread the word of the best synth pop music videos 2021 via your social channels.