We’ve teamed up with Vodafone and spent the last few months working on a series of projects with some of our most talented friends, making short films, flying planes, building high-fashion wendy houses – that sort of thing. Obviously we brought cameras along to film everything, below are our Top 5 Heroes.

Lily Allen
Lily Allen is nothing if not honest in her lyrics and her commendable quest for “fuckloads of diamonds”, and that’s probably why most people on the planet, including us, love her. As part of our ongoing Heroes project with Vodafone, we sat down with Lils, who’s been touring for a year, to talk about her plans to move to the countryside and have babies as she got ready for her first ever gig in Liverpool.

Faris Badwan
If you’ve ever spent any time with Faris Badwan, you’ll be familiar with the way he’s always sketching away in his moleskin. Seriously, always; it’s kind of rude. You could be asking the guy to be your best man and he’d be scratching an intricate sketch of John Dee riding Moby Dick or something equally eloquent. Still, he managed to put down the pen long enough to make this year’s best record with The Horrors and start a side-project, Lumina, with Cherish Kaya, who used to play with Ipso Facto and Florence and the Machine and who’s middle name is Tuba (honestly). Faris made his directorial debut when making the new video for Lumina’s new single, as part of our ongoing project with Vodafone, we went along to see him do it. Having not slept for two nights, he looks a bit dazed, but it all kind of works out. You can watch it here –

La Roux
La Roux has always dressed like a kind of bitchy cosmic gypsy, which is kind of surprising for a kid who grew up at Brixton raves. Nova Dando is the reason behind that. Nova’s an amazing designer who’s worked with Vice a million times; any time you go round to her flat, even at three in the morning, she’s always in the middle of a mound of clothes, furiously stitching feathers to lycra for some obscure pop show the next day. Like a good friend, La Roux agreed to help Nova during fashion week by performing at her anti-runway show along with the dance troop House of Dangerkat. We took the people from Vodafone and some cameras along for our Heroes project –

Simian Mobile Disco
After making videos for Klaxons and These New Puritans and a billion other amazing projects, Saam Faramand is pretty much our favourite director (something that showed itself when he managed to get half the editorial staff to dance in a box for five minutes each for his last project). Simian Mobile Disco first worked with him in their “Hustler” video when he seemed to get every girl inside Catch to come round and make out with each other. Now, for SMD’s new collaboration with Beth Ditto, Saam’s brought together the woman from all those Nescafe adverts, sappsahism, and weird self-harm. He also let us film him make it for our Heroes project with Vodafone –

Peaches
Peaches used to limit her stage gear to electronic dildos and fake beards, but now, for our Heroes project with Vodafone she’s unleashed a laser orchestra she designed. We filmed her performing an exclusive show in New York with the wondrous thing. Who would have known you could make an electric orchestra so erotic? Actually, Vanessa Mae did that for a thousand teenagers a decade ago, but it was less cool. Feast your eyes on this –