Foster the People “Call It What You Want” Video Released!

It’s finally time to put those pumped-up kicks away for the winter. Indie darlings Foster the People have released a video for their brand new single “Call It What You Want!”

The single is the third from the band’s debut album Torches; the second, “Helena Beat,” is an awesome but somehow still under-the-radar track that peaked at #121 on the Billboard Charts. Perhaps “Pumped Up Kicks” was still getting too much attention? Either way, “Call It What You Want” is just as catchy and fun as their first hit, with a nice splash of retro piano amidst its dancey beats.

The video, directed by Ace Norton (who also directed the video for “Helena Beat”), adds some major weirdness to the track, including a literal splash of water as band members dunk their heads in fishbowls and play drums in bathtubs. The lyrics to “Call It What You Want” turn into a dare as the video presents a variety of strange scenes but no real narrative thread. A man dons lipstick as the band gets kidnapped by a group of unruly women, apparently bored of sitting Vanity Fair-cover style and chanting the chorus through megaphones. Entertainment Weekly’s assessment: “It’s all pretty trippy, and occasionally staged like something Stanley Kubrick would have hallucinated as he was falling asleep. (That’s a compliment, by the way.)” Meanwhile, Billboard says the new vid is “a melange of increasingly creepier images set to the band’s characteristically up-tempo indie pop.” The only thing you can’t call it is boring.

Foster the People’s new video also continues the band’s obsession with guns. In the “Pumped Up Kicks” lyrics, lead singer Mark Foster warns the “kids” that they’d better run faster than his guns and bullets. In “Call It What You Want,” a group of women wearing T-shirts that spell out “FOSTER” get shot in the chest and bleed blue paint (don’t you?). Perhaps FTP’s next album title should be spelled out in the Sopranos font that makes each “R” a pistol (Tom Haverford from Parks & Rec would love it, at least).

Still, it’s not all guns and weird videos for Foster the People. In a recent interview with Antenna mag, the band laid out their upcoming plans: “We’re starting our final US tour this year and gonna be working on our second record,” Mark said. “We’re also teaming up with a charity bus called the Do Good Bus and it’s a bus that’s gonna follow us around on this fall tour and doing something with a local charity every day.” The Marks and Cubbie are also participating in MoVember, a movement to grow moustaches to raise awareness for men’s health and prostate cancer.