Remember that awesome Regina Spektor music video from when she was a nobody? It had a stream of toy soldiers pouring out of her mouth, she played a misfit piano with oversize keys, the color palette was subtle yet playful, and paper cutouts of uniformed men, some with a pig head, were animated to climb up poles and kick each other’s hats off their heads; most of all, it had Regina winking at you when you least expected it, looking like a hot music teacher in a pilot-y outfit, seducing you with her Mozart.

So I’m wondering why, in her new videos for “Eet” and “Laughing With”, she looks like the aunt who puts way too much sprinkles on her cookies and pulls your cheeks way too hard (the songs aren’t exciting either). In “Eet”, the idea of her awkwardly typing out music notes off a handsome typewriter is definitely one to run with; in “Laughing With”, we’re offered far too many tricks, though some are charming and most are well-done. But I wish that piano with the sky skin, borrowed from the equally cheesy album cover, was never conceived; and in both videos, especially “Eet”, there’s the uppity hair-do, the matronly get-up, the cheap magazine face glow and cheesy 90s aesthetics. Watch all three videos, and tell me which one’s the coolest.

“Eet”

“Laughing With”

“Us” – directed by Adria Petty (the good one, yeah?)