Karma Police

Nigel Godrich and Thom Yorke rebuilt the ending of "Karma Police" after Yorke told the producer he was unhappy with it. The pair constructed a new close from loops and samples, a technique they had not attempted before. Godrich later called it the first time they had done anything like that, just the two of them in the studio, and a forerunner of methods Radiohead would develop on later albums. In the final minute of the track, Ed O'Brien distorted his guitar by driving a delay effect into self-oscillation and lowering the delay rate, producing a melting sound.

The title came from an inside joke among the band members, who would threaten to call the "karma police" whenever someone did something bad. Yorke described the song as being about stress and about the malicious way people looked at him, saying it was against bosses and middle management. He and Jonny Greenwood stressed that it was humorous and not entirely serious. Lines like "He buzzes like a fridge" referred to distracting background noise, a theme of OK Computer.

Released on 25 August 1997 as the second single from OK Computer, "Karma Police" reached number eight in the UK and topped the chart in Iceland. Its video, directed by Jonathan Glazer, showed Yorke in the back of a car pursuing a man along a dark road, and won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction. The Hungarian actor Lajos Kovács played the running man and received leg injections to keep going after developing cramp.