Who knew watching two shirtless men knock the living snot out of each other would become not only an interesting sport, but also the theme to countless pop videos and movies? Although Hollywood films did inspire Crash Kings’ “Hot Fire” music video, however, the alt-rock trio and director Michael Lei didn’t exactly have "Rocky" in mind while filming.

“We both had a love of Christopher Nolan’s movies and wanted to capture a dark psychological feel to the narrative, much like in his films,” said bass player Michael Beliveau. “He [Lei] added in some surreal elements to enhance the viewer’s feeling of the boxer’s maniacal and slightly delusional struggle.” That explains the desert scene trickery that occurs towards the latter part of the black-and-white video.

It may seem Crash Kings chose a fighter-type video to emulate the difficulties they went through to get their sophomore album Dark of the Daylight released, but that wasn’t exactly their intention. “Originally the idea wasn’t to capture our own feeling of struggle, [but] in retrospect it does feel very in line with what we went through.” Now independent, the guitarless dudes from Los Angeles aren’t losing any recognition.

In fact, if “Hot Fire” sounds familiar, that may be because a little brand called Mountain Dew decided to put the track in one of their television commercials starring famous NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.  “I was a bit skeptical that the commercial was going to be an amped-up NASCAR commercial, but I was pretty pleased when I saw the actual spot—it’s quite beautifully done.”

“Hot Fire” is available for download on Crash Kings’ Artist Platform page.