Exist Yesterday.

น้ำชา (Namcha Chiranat) ft. Southside, “Fine Fine Fine” (2012)

Thai pop would seem to be the next frontier.

This is very much indebted to Western (and of course Japanese and Korean) pop of the past few years, what with the AutoTune, the guest rappers, and the dubstep breakdown, but little as I know about Thai music it seems very much of the region too: the high-pitched vocals, though they mostly follow the “rules” of Western pop, are very much a Southeast Asian pop sound. It’s the fact that Namcha sometimes slips “out of key” — in quotes because different cultures use different harmonic scales, obviously — that makes me think of pop naïfs like Rebecca Black or Kim Kardashian (or in early, inaccurate readings, Ke$ha), but she’s clearly a trained dancer and a strong enough comedian for the goofy video. A pop star, in other words.

I’m a sucker for bright colors and twisted-blurt productions, though, and this delivers on both counts.

(I’m going to be posting pop videos from around the world all night, probably, so be warned.)