"Karma Police" delves into themes of stress, dissatisfaction with capitalism, and the feeling of being watched or judged. The title itself comes from an inside joke among the band members, used when someone did something bad. While the song addresses these serious topics, the band emphasized that it also carries a humorous and not entirely serious tone. It features acoustic guitar and piano, building from a mid-tempo verse and chorus into a section with the line "For a minute there, I lost myself," which the singer noted as an example of using everyday phrases in lyrics. At its heart, the song plays with the tension between societal pressures and a personal, sometimes ironic, detachment.