One of the reasons I love/hate music videos is that they provide a context that otherwise wouldn't occur to the listener. I first heard M83's "Don't Save Us From The Flames" on Launch, conjoined with a video in which a picked-on, slightly gothy adolescent girl rides around on her bike, encounters ghosts and floats into the sky with her secret crush, both bedecked in white sheets and eyeliner. It's astoundingly hokey, but the song's dissonant verse, dramatic chorus and "Schizophrenia"-quoting coda now represent the apex of teenage romantic fantasy; it's a window into that forgotten world where hormone-fueled dreams of acceptance and satiation are detached from the worldly constraints one must eventually acknowledge. What I might have perceived as catchy bombast now resonates on a very basic level. I haven't decided what I think of the rest of the album (I haven't heard much Manheim Steamroller but I want to compare it to Manheim Steamroller), but, thanks in part to that oh-so-outcast-baiting video, this track makes my Top Ten Singles Of 2005 (so far, for whatever that's worth).

note: The video edit hacks off a minute. The full-length version is more affecting.