Downloads

Surfing the Web for new music, video and MP3 downloads can be a serious time investment. Picks from Times staff and contributors will help take the drag out of click-and-drag music choices. Some downloads may contain explicit lyrics. All are free, except as noted.

-- CASEY DOLAN

“Love Like Winter”

AFI

www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2774793

Ingmar Bergman will not come to mind with this video of AFI performing during a blizzard in an evergreen forest. A caped woman appears; not Max von Sydow’s Death. She is ... well, who knows? Certainly not singer Davey Havok and his cohorts, whose brain cells may well be freezing as they ponder the many reasons they should have avoided this pointless video. The song will recall for some the New Romantics of the ‘80s (anyone remember Visage? Didn’t think so). Imagine what the video directors for Sigur Ros could have done with this -- if they had cared.

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“I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer”

The Cardigans

youtube.com/watchvjlHNh1Oj7TU

Take a playful singer who likes to dress up and spin around, an archetypal rehearsal space with guitar-string packages and lyric sheets littering the floor, a rocking track that hangs tough with the vocals and, most important, a charismatic dog and cat playing out the “he” and “she” of the lyric and you have the recipe for a compulsively watchable video. The album was released last year as an import but surfaced domestically just a few weeks ago. This is one of two videos created for the record.

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“The Rock Drill”

The Chemical Brothers

flash.tatetracks.org.uk/chemical/broad.htm

Jacob Epstein’s “Torso in Metal From ‘The Rock Drill’,” a sculpture created in 1913 and 1914, is on exhibit at the Tate Gallery and the Chemical Brothers have set a suitably ambient soundtrack to its cybergallery version. The viewer can choose to move around the statue, zoom in on specific areas, all while “The Rock Drill” pounds its dance rhythms in the background. It is not an entirely happy marriage -- it is hard to reconcile Epstein’s fantasy of modern machinery with an Ibiza dance floor mid-rave. Epstein’s sculpture has a static, and stately, beauty whereas the Chemical Brothers encourage you to move.

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“Mohamed”

Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars

youtube.com/watchvsU8Fexd_6PI

Mohamed is a vocalist and percussionist with this extraordinary troupe of refugees of Sierra Leone’s bloody civil war. The main repertoire of the All Stars is a sort of reggae hybrid, but this casual verite video shows Mohamed playing a thumb piano and singing spontaneously in a traditional West African manner. It has the feel of a classic field recording. People are speaking and harmonizing out of view of the camera, which remains stationary. Mohamed is framed in natural light while all around him is darkness. This is as organic-looking a music video as imaginable.

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“The Lyrical Collaboration: Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau”

Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau

www.quietfm.com.nyud.net:8090/Audio/PatBrad.mp3 The audio here is very long, including a spoken introduction and four tracks from Metheny and Mehldau’s current album. Guitar and piano can occupy the same register and create musical traffic jams, so arrangements are key. Bill Evans and Jim Hall did it in the ‘60s and Metheny and Mehldau have some success as a duo, although there are occasions when each goes outside harmonically, to jarring effect. “Make Peace” is the loveliest of the four numbers.

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casey.dolan@latimes.com