YMMV / Foster the People

• First Installment Wins: Their debut album, Torches, is much more well-received than their later albums.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: "Pumped Up Kicks" is more popular in Australia than in the United States. During the start of school holidays in Australia, it is very common for shopping malls to play the song on their radios. It helps that Australia has a low gun homicide rate, unlike in the United States where the song is slightly more polarizing. One time when the band toured Australia and performed live without playing the song, many Australians were furious, and began swearing or chanting the song’s title repeatedly. The song is also very popular in Mexico, and there are many Latin Spanish sub translations of the song available on the Internet.
• Memetic Mutation: "Pumped Up Kicks" became associated with incredibly dark jokes about school shootings, although this didn't happen until a few years after the song had been released.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • "Pumped Up Kicks", being known for its Lyrical Dissonance about gun violence, one can't help but be reminded of the Columbine High School massacre. Mark Foster was in high school when Columbine went down. Rest assured: There's no way he wasn't thinking of it when he wrote the song. Even more so, since Cubbie Fink has a cousin who survived Columbine, who he flew out to see the day after it happened.
  • There's an available instrumental version of "Pumped Up Kicks". At minute 1:02, right before it gets to the chorus, you can hear a brief, distorted voice saying "This is where you die."
  • The ending to "Goats in Trees".
  • The video for "Best Friend". Trippy visuals of the band playing, tons of Body Horror, a woman plunking herself up and it ends with her choking on a dress. Good lord, they've truly topped themselves with this one. Not to mention the whole video is about supermodels getting Eaten Alive by a woman who is trying to obtain their beauty. We even see one of the supermodels getting Swallowed Whole with her legs sticking out of the woman's mouth and desperately kicking as she tries (and fails) to save herself.
• Signature Song: "Pumped Up Kicks", being their breakout single and their only Top 40 hit to date, is the song by which most people tend to identify the band.
  • To a lesser extent since it wasn't as big of a hit as "Pumped Up Kicks", "Don't Stop (Color on the Walls)" is also quite recognizable due to how often it was used in commercials.

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