I love discovering great new music, but since I started Reselect back in May, I’ve been focusing primarily on previously released stuff. Not that this is the rule of the blog, of course — I want to feature any great songs that I hear. It’s just that in these past couple of months, there hasn’t been a “current” song that’s really jumped out at me and demanded to be featured on the blog. Until now!

The song is “Pumped Up Kicks,” by Foster the People. I’ve been hearing it quite a bit on the radio lately, and I really liked it even the first time I heard it, which is usually a very good sign (although by no means a prerequisite for me to eventually end up liking/loving a song). I know very little about Foster the People, to be honest, other than that they have an unusual name — upon further inspection, the lead guy’s name is Mark Foster, so hence the band name, sort of.

“Pumped Up Kicks” comes from their May 2011 album, Torches, which I will certainly have to delve into further soon in hopes that there’s more good stuff where this song came from. “Pumped Up Kicks” starts with a nice groovy bass-line rhythm and features a detached, megaphone-style vocal and a chorus with an Arcade Fire vibe to it. In fact, if I had to have guessed initially, based on the sound of the song and the band name, I would have guessed that this was a large group, along the lines of Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree (although maybe not that big). However, it turns out that Foster the People is actually just a trio, so there goes that — they (or their producers) just did a nice job of creating that big sound. Speaking of producers, Torches was produced by a trio of producers who, between them, have worked with Florence and the Machine, Interpol, and Beck, which makes a lot of sense, as I can hear subtle similarities to each of those in this song. In any case, “Pumped Up Kicks” is a very cool song that promises more good things to come. If any of you who are more familiar with the band would like to add anything, please comment!

And here’s the video for the song…just a performance-style thing. Seems like they could’ve done something a bit more creative with this, but hey, that’s just me…