Director Sam Peacocke’s tale of love and motor-racing was the first official music video to be made for The Checks. Set in the 1960s, it contrasts a young Japanese driver at the track with his apprehensive girlfriend who waits forlornly at home. Tapping into his own love of motor-sport and memories of being at a racetrack as a child, Peacocke made this stylish, streamlined clip for a budget of $30,000 at Hobsonville Air Base near Auckland; the meticulous attention to period detail includes authentic Lotus racing cars.

The first single from Bic Runga’s chart-topping second album Beautiful Collision is — according to AudioCulture's profile of the singer — an autobiographical song about the stresses of touring. 'Get Some Sleep' peaked at number three in the New Zealand charts, and was the best-selling song by a local artist in 2002. Two videos were made; the version aimed at local audiences sees Runga roaming Aotearoa in a mobile radio station playing CDs and records, greeting fans and generally broadcasting happy vibes: Yes...we do believe Bic may be having fun.  

Seventies genre-shifters Schtung hit the road in this energetic clip for their first single, donning their white boiler suits and cramming into an open-top Morris Minor. Along the way there are glimpses of one of Schtung's genius moments: signing their record deal underwater. The video was shot in Shelly Bay in Wellington, although there is a brief jump indoors when the band go latino, and Andrew Hagen grabs the microphone from vocalist Paul Jeffery. After that watch for possible slips in the space-time continuum, involving moving saxophonists and the band swapping vehicles.  

Chris Knox mines his immediate, 1981-era surroundings for this elaborate stop-motion clip. Record players go crazy, sleeping bags swallow people, and hardly anyone on screen seems to have a face. On the telly are Springboks and protests, plus the Ready to Roll top 20 countdown. And all this unravels a full two decades before editing programme Final Cut Pro made homespun hip again, and directors like Michel Gondry (The Science of Sleep) started popularising the craft aesthetic. 

Frequent collaborators singer Anika Moa and director Justin Pemberton crossed paths again for the music video of this track, from Moa's 2008 album In Swings the Tide — her first, slightly countrified album for EMI. In a tastefully furnished room, Moa wakes in a bed of chocolate satin sheets, only to find the day is nearly done for her and the mysterious bedmate sleeping next to her. Moa exhorts her lover, “please don't be mean to me 'cos I really tried ...”, before stripping the duvet off the relationship to see what's underneath.

The lyrics to Greg Johnson's ‘Looking out on Monday’ pay tribute to the satisfaction of sleeping in, and skiving off work; they also mention recognising that “failure is in your lover’s eyes”. Johnson's long time musical collaborator Ted Brown appears in the video as the friend who pops over to Greg's place (in Los Angeles?) to say hello. 'Looking Out on Monday' is taken from 2008's Seven Day Cure, which NZ Herald critic Russell Baillie called “one of the most fully realised Johnson albums yet”. The track was included in Dustin Hoffman / Emma Thompson romance Last Chance Harvey.

Made with the contents of many secondhand stores, the video for Evermore's 'Light Surrounding You' makes apt use of its title — the band performs in a ring of lights out in the New South Wales desert. The exact location, Lake George, had been dry for several years at the time of the shoot, although it was later submerged. The video stars Australian actor Emily Browning (Sleeping Beauty), who follows a trail of antique lights out to Evermore’s circle in the desert. The second single off 2006 album Real Life, the song achieved platinum sales in Australia, where it reached number one.

For this stylishly shot video, the ghosts of Goodnight Nurse rise from their coffins to perform a song about obsession, and dancing with the Devil. Reflecting the band's own obsession with horror imagery, the setting is a moon-lit hillside, surrounded by gravestones. The video won Best Rock Video at the 2005 Juice TV Awards, and was a finalist for Video of the Year. After the group's passing, each player stayed involved in music; lead vocalist Joel Little would rise up again to co-write Lorde's Grammy award-winning hit Royals. Director Jonathan Gerrard remembers making the video here.