Nearly two decades before Mighty Boosh comes this loopy confection. With its missing visage line "I left my face, in outer space" you know this is going to be one trippy song — and the wild and spacey video is totally in keeping with the track. There’s UFO imagery and all sorts of other mad things thrown in, including a dinosaur skeleton and a vacuum cleaner played like a guitar. And it must be one of the few music videos to feature a band member wearing a peggy squares crochet poncho. The clip won Best Music Video at the 1993 NZ Music Awards.

“Watch out young love!”. Even in black and white, Alastair Riddell’s pouting David Bowie riff brought a shock of rock'n'roll verve to the ‘New Faces’ talent section of Studio One — a popular TV show more used to singing families and novelty acts. The judges were mostly bemused by the glam rock onslaught and only grudgingly allowed Alastair Riddell's band to get through to the finals (where they buried them). But rock fans took notice of the x-factor and EMI quickly signed the band. Within weeks 'Out on the Street' had become the first local chart topper in three years.

Australian music video maestro Richard Lowenstein (INXS, U2, cult film Dogs in Space) directed this bouncy city-life clip for the song when Tim Finn first flew solo from Split Enz.  Bright colours, video scratching, an animated sausage dog — what more could you want? Finn walks along carrying a ghettoblaster in Wayfarer sunglasses; it must be the 80s. 'Fraction too Much Friction' got to number two on the Kiwi singles charts in 1983, and number eight in Australia. That year Finn recorded a last album with Split Enz, before leaving the band he co-founded roughly a decade before.

Julie Hermelin's (Sarah McLachlan, Luscious Jackson, Moby, Ben Folds Five) mesmerising video shows the band playing while NYC streetlife passes by ... in reverse. A clever if not confounding concept when considering the band's performance, which appears to be forwards. Extraordinary processing and grainy contrast further enhance this one take time-space wonder. Note the man "reconstructing" an apple with his mouth.

This was the first music video for iconic Dunedin group The Chills. Directed by Peter Janes, the promo for the song roams around an aptly chilly looking attic while the band performs. As soap bubbles float towards the rafters, there’s fog on the breath of singer Martin Phillipps, who lulls the listener to swim into space with him. “Come along baby we'll live in our kaleidoscope world”. The early Chills song was from Flying Nun’s seminal Dunedin Double EP. It was later featured as the opening (and title) track on The Chills’ debut LP, a 1986 compilation of early songs for the band.

Featuring artwork by Grammy-nominated Kiwi Sarah Larnach  — whose art has been a key feature on Ladyhawke's albums  — the music video for My Delirium weaves between reality and a dreamscape where cats dominate the Mount Rushmore sculpture, and Ladyhawke soars through space in a car. The video opens with the singer in a dreary roadside motel, before animated artwork on the wall comes to life, featuring a cartoon Ladyhawke walking out of the motel and hitting the road in a classic convertible. The musician won six Tuis at the 2009 NZ Music Awards. 

After winning attention both in The Thomas Oliver Band and with his solo lap steel guitar work, Thomas Oliver took away the 2016 APRA Silver Scroll songwriting award with 'If I Move to Mars'. The video makes the most of the intragalactic theme, with a Gravity inspired/gravity-defying video made by a pair of effects wizards from Weta Workshop. The visually impressive result sees Oliver in a spacesuit, peacefully orbiting the Earth playing a custom space-guitar as the sun slowly rises behind him.

For this Garageland video, British director Gina Birch filmed the band multiple times, before dissecting the footage and reconstructing it in segments. By splitting the screen equally into 12 squares, Birch creates some unusual distortions of time and space, including one head becoming two, and mirrors being used to dazzle the camera. The video was shot in London. Birch was a founding member of British post-punk band The Raincoats; she has gone on to direct videos for New Order, The Pogues, and The Libertines.

Inspired by the legend of Ranginui and Papatuanuku — and two attractive singers — director Jessica Sanderson pulls out the stops with this video, which features galaxies, moons, and the circling star wattage of Stan Walker and Ginny Blackmore. Stan and Ginny play lovers who can’t exist in the same space without the potential for havoc, with Walker representing water and earth and Wigmore the sky. Co-written by the two artists, ‘Holding You’ became a number one hit in New Zealand, and was the most downloaded song on local iTunes on its first morning of release.  

Mi-Sex moved further into the futuristic sci-fi world signalled by their hit single ‘Computer Games’ with the release of their chart topping second album Space Race in 1980. The lead-off single ‘People’ emerged at a time when the world was still coming to grips with cloning, genetic engineering and test tube babies. The video showcases the band’s well honed combination of techno-pop and the more straight ahead rock’n’roll beloved of Australian pub audiences — with some visual special effects reserved for the future shock of the spoken segment.