The Kooks Channel Tarantino In NSFW ‘Around Town’ Video

Brighton indie poppers The Kooks have taken a decidedly more art-house approach to the music video for their latest single Around Town, which stars a French female assassin and was inspired by the work of action film kingpins Luc Besson and Quentin Tarantino.

The most definitely NSFW clip is sure to divide viewers, more so for its near three minute opening scene than for the ensuing gratuitous violence. The video opens with a lengthy conversation between actor Christopher Fairbank (The Fifth Element, Alien 3) and Quebec actress Pom Klementieff (Spike Lee’s Oldboy), which is of course dubbed in French.

“We decided rather than simply put a video to music we would do something more cinematic,” The Kooks’ frontman Luke Pritchard said in a statement. “It was very much a collaboration with director Ryan Hope. We wanted to evoke the directors Besson and Tarantino, while also exploring themes of karma and the poem If.”

British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling‘s 1895 poem If is one of Britain’s most revered works, often lauded as a literary example of British stoicism. It’s written as a set of rules passed down from parent to child for getting through life, displaying the British virtues of a “stiff upper lip” and self-discipline in the face of adversity.

The track is taken from The Kooks’ upcoming fourth studio full-length album Listen, which is set to drop August 29th through Virgin/EMI. Produced by frontman Luke Pritchard and hip-hop producer Inflo, it also features the track Down.

Watch: The Kooks – Around Town

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