The group filmed a music video with director Danny Clinch at the Springwater Supper Club and Lounge, a dive bar in Nashville, Tennessee.

[2] "Little Black Submarines" originated as a song recorded by guitarist Dan Auerbach and producer Brian Burton that saw several alterations.

[4] The music video for "Little Black Submarines" was directed by Danny Clinch[5] and filmed during the group's live performance at the Springwater Supper Club and Lounge, a small dive bar in Nashville, Tennessee.

"[7] The Black Keys allowed a small number of fans into the venue for filming of the one song before deciding to play an entire show.

Entertainment Weekly said that it was the album's "best surprise", calling it an "edge-of-sanity epic" and "a crate-digger thriller that starts as a quiet acoustic hymn, then explodes.

"[9] NME called the song "more ambitious" than the album's other tracks and said that it "start[s] out in Johnny Cash territory before exploding into a psycho-blues freakdown.

[12] Rolling Stone wrote that one could "easily hear Led Zeppelin in 'Little Black Submarines', an acoustic blues that gets run over halfway through by electric riffs and brutish drums, Carney doing a hilariously great junkyard John Bonham".

[13] The Independent called the song epic and said that it "transforms mid-song from moody acoustic reflection to full-blown Led Zep blues-rock barrage".

[16] In a 2011 end-of-year ranking, Rolling Stone selected "Little Black Submarines" as the 18th-best song of the year, calling it a "wintry folk ballad [that] erupts into a wind-whipped burner with a sugar crusted psych-rock chorus".