India's Best Music Videos of 2026 So Far

2026's music videos have been on a different wave. The year so far has seen artists using the format not as a promotional afterthought but as an extension of the song itself — a place to take risks, build worlds, and say things the music alone can't. Yashraj is splitting personalities at a dinner table, Dhanji and RASLA are running through Ahmedabad streets, Curry are weaving Yakshagana storytelling through Mangalore's rivers, and JBABE is sitting with a question that has no clean answer. From Delhi to Chennai to Coastal Karnataka, here are twelve videos that prove the format is very much alive.

“Mujhe Yeh Gaana Pasand Hai” - Yashraj, NEVERSOBER

Yashraj has always used humour as a structural tool rather than a garnish, and this video is the clearest demonstration of that. Shot around a dinner date, it stages a battle of personas - different versions of himself pulling in different directions - while his introspective lyricism does the heavier lifting. 

“Public Notice” - KARMA

A no-bars-barred flow that holds a mirror up to the hypocrisy of the times, the video makes its point without flinching - and then pulled back the curtain further by acknowledging that some listeners will hear it as "too technical" when really, he says, people just avoid direct truths.

“hASHISHBHAI” - Dhanji, RASLA

The concept - a man running for his life who ends up at his own funeral - mirrors the track's energy: chaotic, self-aware, oddly funny. Dhanji's street-rooted Gujarati rap and RASLA's bass-heavy production have always had a cinematic quality, and here the video catches up to it.

“Lime Tikka” - Baalti, Lapgan [Video by Excise Dept]

Directed by Delhi rap collective Excise Dept, "Lime Tikka" follows Satellite Kaur, a young girl determined to launch herself into space after a satellite crash-lands in her village at the moment of her birth. The nadhaswaram driving the track sounds like it barged into the club uninvited, and the video matches that energy - chaotic, colourful, and culturally specific in a way that makes it feel completely its own.

“Psilovibin” - Paal Dabba

Chennai rapper and choreographer Paal Dabba wrote, directed, and performed in this one himself. The video traces a journey from a quiet, self-doubting kid to someone who has found his voice, aided, as he puts it, by choice substances and a surprise appearance from Trisha Krishnan, whose glamorous cameo arrives exactly when the video needs it most. 

“Amsham” - Aksomaniac ft. M.H.R, Bhumi, Circle Tone

"Amsham" builds its video around a sweeping mythological frame: the God of Desire finding heaven and hell not in another realm but right here, on earth. Aksomaniac, M.H.R, Bhumi and Circle Tone each bring a different texture to it, and the visual language matches the ambition of the concept without getting lost in it.

“Parchhaiyan” - Janisht Joshi, Phosphenes

A cross-border collab between Mumbai-based Janisht Joshi and Kathmandu indie duo Phosphenes, "Parchhaiyan" frames its central tension as a visual choice: the sharp red of love against the familiar void of a black suit. Joshi's songwriting and Phosphenes' atmospheric production make an unexpectedly natural fit, and the video earns its melancholy without forcing it.

“Woh Alag Hain Humse” - Bawari Basanti

Bawari Basanti's description of this video says it best: it's about coexistence, and the fragile space between people who share a life but see the world differently. Shot with the restraint that defines her work, the video lets that tension breathe rather than resolve it.

“Who You Are” - RANJ, CLIFR

From RANJ's debut mixtape 27 CLUB, the "Who You Are" video places Ranj in conversation with her past and future selves - a fitting visual for a project built around identity, self-definition, and the process of becoming. With longtime collaborator CLIFR on production, it's one of the more conceptually tight videos from the independent space this year.

“Hunkar” - The Aahvaan Project

The Aahvaan Project have been quietly building one of the most considered bodies of work in Indian folk-fusion, and "Hunkar" - from their 2026 EP Main Bhi Khadi Hoon - is the video that makes the philosophy explicit. The chase after love, the exhaustion of running, and then the surrender that turns out to be peace rather than defeat. It's a video that earns its stillness.

“Manase” - Curry

Set along Mangalore's rivers and seas, Curry's "Manase" uses Yakshagana-based storytelling to tell the love and longing between two people drawn to each other the way a river finds its ocean. A Kannada electronic track from their EP Suprabhatha, it's the kind of video that makes you feel the geography as much as the emotion - slow-tempo, deeply rooted, and completely unhurried about where it's going.

“Don't Call Me Your Brother” - JBABE

Chennai/Goa artist JBABE (Josh Fernandez of The F16s) uses this video to sit with a question that doesn't have a clean answer: what happens when you find out the person closest to you was never quite the person you thought they were - and somehow that's not even the worst part. Laidback alt-rock with philosophical depth, the video extends the literary sensibility of his album A Little Larger Than The Entire Universe without explaining it to death.

What stands out across all twelve of these is the range — in language, geography, concept and scale. There's no house style to Indian music video-making in 2026, which is exactly the point. From a Gujarati rapper running from himself at his own funeral to a Mangalorean band drawing on classical dance theatre, from a Delhi rapper who got his video pulled for saying something true to a Kathmandu duo collaborating across borders — the format is being used to say things that matter, and that's worth paying attention to.