The Five Best DIY, ADD, Loopalicious, Split-screened YouTube Cover Songs

By Zach Dionne Posted Feb 27th 2010 02:00PM

YouTube has given us many magical things -- namely, videos that suck away our work-days like thirsty digital vampires. But one of the greatest subsets of these magical things, a surefire this-will-go-viral-if-done-right genre, is the work of frustrated and/or brilliant musicians who love to clone themselves into bands by layering tracks, split-screening clips and rocking in a fashion our Internet-age attention spans can most certainly get down with.

After the jump, the five best videos and why we love 'em.

Pomplamoose -- 'Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)' by Beyonce
Wins the ADD Award in the first 20 seconds alone. This one-guy-one-girl team deals almost strictly in stacking tracks upon tracks of video and audio, resulting in some of the best material to ever come out of YouTube.

Levar Allen -- 'Heartless' by Kanye West
Once you get to the harmonized guitar shredding and a finger-tapping bass solo, you kind of forget there are no vocals. Allen's talent and capacity for rearranging pop songs is staggering.

Julia Nunes -- 'Accidentally in Love' by Counting Crows
Picking a favorite video by the girl who went crazily viral after her ukulele cover of *NSYNC's 'Bye Bye Bye' is like choosing a favorite talking cat video. Nunes snaps and claps relentlessly, smiles endlessly and harmonizes beautifully... with herself. This cover has a melodica, boasts more hits than the original music video and features a tissue box as percussion. 'Nuff said.

Alex Goot -- 'Changes' by Tupac
Not as off-the-wall as these videos can sometimes get, but the dude's got a reason for sticking to the basics: His voice is velvet and his instrumental chops are crisp.

Lassje Gjertsen -- 'Amateur' (original)
Okay, this one's not a cover, but launching in 2006, it's kinda the grandfather of this YouTube genre. The Norweigan videomeister kicked off his career with his now-famous beatboxing experiment. He stepped up the editing and performing skills with this (catchy) masterpiece.