The music video for "Kangaroo Court" by Capital Cities was co-directed by the band members and Carlos Lopez Estrada. It features a zebra protagonist who is tried and executed in a kangaroo court for attempting to enter a club. The video takes the lyrics literally by setting scenes in a courtroom with animal extras and a kangaroo judge. It integrates the song throughout with characters dancing and an elephant playing trumpet. While having some pop elements like dancing, the video's unconventional artistic style and narrative are more consistent with its indie genre.

1. Music Video Analysis (1)
Kangaroo Court – Capital Cities

2. Kangaroo Court – Capital Cities
 Kangaroo Court was released on the 7th of June, 2013,
and was the second single from the group’s debut
album.
 Though not overly successful, peaking at 50th on the US
weekly charts, it’s music video on YouTube has
accumulated over 35,000,000 views.
 The music video was co-directed between the two
members of the group and Carlos Lopez Estrada.

3. Lyrics and Visuals
 The chorus repeats the phrase, “It’s a kangaroo court”. This is
represented in the actual video by placing a key scene in an actual
courtroom, and by making all the extras animals, and having a
kangaroo preside as judge, means that the creators took this very
literally.
 However, the actual meaning of the idiom is ‘an unofficial court held
to try someone as guilty without good evidence’, which is also a
prominent theme in the video as the protagonist, a zebra, is tried and
executed simply for going to a club.
 Other lines in the song have further connotations of law and
courtrooms, such as “I commit the crime of wasting time”, “Yes, I am
guilty, but don’t misunderstand me”, which is reiterated in the visuals
that take place in an actual courtroom.
 The opening verse reads as follows; “There’s a dark part of town
where the girls get down and I cannot wait for a chance to go”, which
is also represented very literally in the video as a club that the main
character, a zebra, tries to gain entry to.

4. Music and Visuals
 The track itself is a key part of the music video. When the
zebra enters the club, the band on the stage are playing that
song. The elephant playing the trumpet later appears, playing
the instrument from the witness box in the courtroom scene in
time with when the trumpet is played in the song. The elephant
chosen as the one playing the trumpet is rather clever because
of the pre-existing association elephants have with a trumpet
sound.
 Even in the courtroom scene, most of the extras can be seen
nodding their heads and tapping their feet in time with the
song, so it is definitely ever-present in the actual video.
 In the club scene, we also see the other extras dancing to the
song which the band are playing, with the zebra taking centre
stage and also dancing in time with the actual music.

5. Genre and Characteristics
 The song is described as part of the ‘indie pop’ genre, and as such
uses tropes from both of those head genres.
 The pop-based aspects of the music video are grounded in the
reliance on dancing and singing – the performance that is present in
the video, whether that be the dancing and singing of the
protagonist or the performance of the band throughout.
 Where this video differs from more traditional pop is in the more
artistic nature of the events shown. A convention of pop videos is
the reliance on advertising an attractive lifestyle featuring
attractive people, whereas the indie features of the video, like
dressing all the extras up as animals or the dark turn the narrative
takes at the end, are unconventional of the pop genre.

6. Demands of the Label
 The label the duo are signed to, Capitol Records, is a subsidiary of the
Universal Music Group, and have a plethora of artists signed to them
covering a wide range of genres, so the label itself have no real
specialisation. Certain pop elements in the music video are perhaps
more greatly emphasised than they would be if it were produced by an
entirely independent label, such as the dancing, but overall much of
the artistic integrity of the creators has been preserved.
 That said, this track is very consistent with the rest of the artists’
work, in that it is somewhat more bright and upbeat than other indie-
based songs.

7. Emphasis of Looking
 The music video, leaning more towards the indie genre, does not place a
great emphasis on sexualisation. The most prominent example in the
music video is in the form of the female sheep character that takes an
interest in the protagonist, who is somewhat ‘dolled up’, but the fact
that the character itself is an animal nullifies much of these
connotations.

8. Intertextual References
 The obvious intertextual references in this music video come from the
mise-en-scene of the courtroom, which as earlier discussed ties into the
actual lyrical content of the song.