Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 07/08/2011 at 2:19 PM Videos

The Popdust Files: dev, in the dark, music videos

Nobody is doubting Dev’s propensity for trends, whether it’s providing the trendy and/or memorable parts of “Like a G6″ (and, with track “Booty Bounce,” the big sample in “Like a G6″), providing lazy-robot vocals or appearing on, uh, a song by British boy band and X Factor winners JLS. And as it turns out, her video for “In the Dark” is a virtual trend compendium. Watch below, and read on for the four biggest ones:

Trend #1: Hands: Kanye West in “Monster.” There are plenty of hands in pop. The Ting Tings in “Hands.” But neither of these songs had hands growing high as an elephant’s eye, hands in fields making hand-bras, little hand filigrees on picture frames. Dev likes hands. She also likes them doing what they want!

Trend #2: Monochrome: White background. Dark hands and/or graphics. Or to switch things up, a dark background and Dev in the dark! It’s like design 101 in here. See, it’s contrast, and they’re like motion graphics but not, and we’re geeking out at this point and will now proceed to….

Trend #3: Monstrous and/or Creepy Things: We’ve documented the monster trend in pop music in quite exacting detail, detail that includes Dev herself! And aside from the generally monstrous feeling lent here to dancing in the club, we’ve got the aforementioned disembodied hands and a few cameos by a spider and a snake. OK, there’s another reason why there’s a snake. But the secondary reason is that it’s creepy.

Trend #4: Saxophone Various commentators have called this the “Summer of Sax” thanks to Lady Gaga and still-missed Clarence Clemons, Katy Perry and unmissable “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.),” Alexandra Stan in unmissable-in-Europe “Mr. Saxobeat,” and this. On the one hand, it’s not like they coordinated this, and sax doesn’t show up in the video per se. On the other hand, it’s a major trend, so of course we had to mention it.

Honorable Trend Mentions: Dev’s glasses (see: Kanye, Lady Gaga), the ghost/transparency effect on everything (see: way too many to count.) Yes, Dev is trendy. Maybe these trends will even trend her on the charts!