The "pumped up kicks" line in the title and chorus refers to trendy, expensive footwear—shorthand, in the song's ethos, for the accoutrements of the cool set. "All the other kids with the pumped up kicks," Mark Foster merrily chirps, "you better run, better run, outrun my gun.". Robert finishes with an act of patricide. Regardless of its cheerful tempo, the subject matter of "Pumped Up Kicks" doesn't match. According to writer and Foster the People frontman Mark Foster, the song is about a fictional high schooler, Robert ("Robert's got a quick hand"). The "kicks" in the song refer to expensive shoes worn by popular kids at Robert's school. When Foster the People' s anti-gun violence anthem, "Pumped Up Kicks," was released in 2010, it quickly went viral. But not everyone immediately noticed the cautionary tale about gun violence 1P7bw.

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