Pumped Up Kicks
Foster The People
Foster The People are a relatively recent band, starting in 2009 with Mark Foster as singer and Mark Pontius as drummer. The band hit fame in 2010 when this song, Pumped Up Kicks, went viral after Foster released it on his website for free, and has now garnered over 221,000,000 views on YouTube. The band has only had two albums: Torches and Supermodel, which sold collectively 87,000 copies in their first week (Torches sold 33,000 in its first week, Supermodel sold 54,000).
​
The song is indie pop, which is clear through the mellow and soft tones of it, however it is also in the major key, which makes it more upbeat, which is congruent to the genre. The theme of the song, however, is much more sinister, as reading through it suggests that it's about a troubled/depressed teenager planning and executing a school shooting, which is seen through lyrics such as "You better run, better run, outrun my gun," "he's found a six-shooter gun"(pretty self-explanatory) and "daddy works a long day, and he's coming home late" (neglect from the father which could lead the teenager to make rash decisions).
​
The music video sets a much different precedent from the song, and instead continues the upbeat tone of how it sounds, rather than the meaning behind the lyrics. The video is mostly performance, however there are some parts where it follows the band member as they do various things. This both shows the band's musical talent, but also grounds them and makes them seem ordinary and thus relateable to the audience, giving personal identity gratification to the audience.
Example of the performance in the video
Example of the band messing around outside of performances
For the most part, the video uses a handheld camera to make it shaky and give the impression that it is low production, whic expresses the low budget indie aspect of the band, further making them more relatable to the audience. All of these representations fir with Richard Dyer's star theory, speicifically one of the paradoxes which state that the star much be both ordinary and extraordinary, which fits the the video as the band is both having fun and messing around, but also performs on a stage.
​
The editing of the video further relates to the genre as there are many post-production effects and filters added to it, such as blurs and colour correction. There is also one point at the start and end of the video which uses an effect that resembles a movie playing on an old projector, with stripes going across the screen. This is done to further emphasise the low budget nature of the video and indie pop in general, as it represents old equipment that they are able to afford, instead of using high-end expensive modern equipment like most popular bands.
