"Karma Police" is a song by the English alternative rock band Radiohead, released on 25 August 1997, as the second single from their third studio album, OK Computer (1997). It reached number one in Iceland and number eight on the UK Singles Chart. In the US, it peaked at number 14 on the US Alternative Songs chart. It was included on Radiohead: The Best Of (2008). The music video, directed by Jonathan Glazer, sees singer Thom Yorke in the back of a car pursuing a man. In 2021, Rolling Stone placed "Karma Police" at position 279 on its ranking of the 500 greatest songs of all time. Composition "Karma Police" is in a time signature and played in standard tuning. The song is in the key of G major. Acoustic guitar and piano are the most prominent instruments. The song progresses from the intro into a mid-tempo section which alternates between a verse and a chorus. The verse begins with the line "Karma police", and the chorus begins with the line "This is what you'll get". After this section cycles through twice, the song switches into a second section which is based around the line "For a minute there, I lost myself". Yorke's voice is put through a reverb effect and a sliding melodic figure serves as a counterpoint to his vocals. In the final minute, Ed O'Brien distorts his guitar by driving a delay effect to self-oscillation, then lowering the delay rate, creating a "melting" effect. After Yorke told the producer, Nigel Godrich that he was not happy with the ending, the pair reconstructed it with loops and samples, a technique they developed on later Radiohead albums. Godrich said: "It was the first time we did anything like that. Just us in the studio, and a forerunner of a lot of things to come, good and bad." Lyrics The title lyric originates from an inside joke; the members of Radiohead would threaten to call the "karma police" if someone did something bad. Yorke explained that the song was about stress and "having people looking at you in that certain [malicious] way". He said: "It's for someone who has to work for a large company. This is a song against bosses. Fuck the middle management!" Yorke and Jonny Greenwood emphasised in interviews that the song was humorous and "not entirely serious". The line "He buzzes like a fridge / He's