White Knuckles

"White Knuckles" is a song by alternative rock band OK Go from the album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky. The song traces its roots to Prince's style of funk and R&B that brought him to fame.

It was featured in the film The Cabin in the Woods.

Rock Band remix

Fans of the song were given the opportunity to create a remix of "White Knuckles" for inclusion in the Rock Band music video game series through the Rock Band Network. This was won by The Big Robot.

Music video

The music video for "White Knuckles" was directed by Trish Sie, the sister of lead singer Damian Kulash and who had previously directed the band's famous treadmill video for "Here It Goes Again". The one shot video features the band members performing choreographed actions with minimal props (mostly IKEA furniture) alongside a number of trained dogs and one goat, with the actions set in time to the song. Sie thought that in considering the success of the treadmill video, "wouldn’t it be kind of cool if this time the guys were the machines and they’re enabling and operating the dogs". Sie's idea for the "White Knuckles" video followed shortly after the completion of the treadmill video, just prior to the 2006 Video Music Awards. The band considered the idea "absurd and awesome", and a routine was developed in 2009 using only three live animals, with stuffed animals as stand-ins. During the recording of Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, Kulash and Sie played the album alongside their own dogs and watched how the dogs reacted to the songs, finding that "White Knuckles" "matched the playfulness of [their] dogs". The song "White Knuckles" includes the words "paw" and "pet", matching up to the concept of using dogs within the video. Much like with the video for "Here It Goes Again", bassist Tim Nordwind does the lip-syncing in this video instead of Kulash.