"Handlebars" is a song by Flobots. It was released as the first single from their debut album, Fight with Tools, and is the group's largest success, peaking at #3 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks.

"Handlebars" was written and recorded in 2005, it was originally recorded for their first EP, Flobots Present...Platypus, but was re-released on Fight with Tools two years later which then led to its single release one year after the release of Fight with Tools.

Jamie Laurie stated that the song is about "the idea that we have so much incredible potential as human beings to be destructive or to be creative." "And it's tragic to me that the appetite for military innovation is endless, but when it comes to taking on a project like ending world hunger, it's seen as outlandish. It's not treated with the same seriousness. [...] at the same time, I knew there were people at that moment who were being bombed by our own country. And I thought that was incredibly powerful." It is the contrast between these "little moments of creativity, these bursts of innovation," and the way these ideas are put to use "to oppress and destroy people" that the singer feels is "beautiful and tragic at the same time."

The video for the song is animated. It starts out lighthearted, showing two young friends sitting on a hill looking over a city. Prominent in the city is a crystalline tower with part of its framework showing. The friends ride their bikes down the hill without their hands on the handlebars, while one smiles widely. They arrive at a sign that points in two directions, one labeled with a corporate-looking symbol, and the other labeled by a dove. They hug and head their separate ways, the one who originally smiled taking the path of the dove.

The next part of the song centers on the friend who went the way of the dove. He walks along a cracked sidewalk and sees a chalk drawing depicting the first scene of the video: two children on bicycles with their arms in the air, riding down a hill next to a city. He picks up an apple off of the ground and puts it back in its barrel, symbolizing him putting the world back together. He walks past a street corner that shows a path to the corporate street. He does not see that there is blood on the walls of the corporate street. He picks up his phone and sees the corporate friend's face. Here the perspective switches to the other friend, and we see him talking to the peaceful friend on the phone.

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Wikipedia