Empire

This song is about coping with adversity. Of Monsters and Men compare overcoming hardship to rain which is depressing at the time, but rain makes rivers, which "will create an empire for you." Singer Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir told NME it was one of the tracks that came to the band most naturally, although the lyrics were harder to get down. "It took us a few tries," she said, "but we got there in the end and we're very happy with the result."

The song's music video was directed by Tabitha Denholm and features contemporary model Erika Linder and Ingmari Lamy, who was a famous model in the late 1960s. Denholm said: "We see the same fanciful ideas of women's sexuality again and again in music videos which I find it hard to relate to. So when OMAM said they wanted to make a video about a forbidden relationship I was excited! I want to make videos with stories about women that we don't usually see." "This is a Harold and Maude type relationship. The older character actually has the more youthful, liberated spirit which inspires the jaded youngster. It's a twist on the conventions of age that is often borne out in real life. The fact that they are both women has a magical dimension in that Ingmari the elder can see herself in Erika, but i think the profound effect one person can have on another is quite magical." "From the inception I had the model Erika Linder in mind for the younger character. She is uniquely stunning, famously she modelled as a boy and a girl but foremost she is just Erika. The way she exists beyond convention made her perfect for this project. Then the moment I saw a picture ofIngmari Lamy I knew she had that luminescent quality it would take to make the relationship believable. She was a big model in the 60s discovered by Bob Richardson but if anything she has grown more beautiful with age. Spending time with her in LA I have never known anyone to get so much attention for their looks form random passers by." "Coincidentally we had to fly both ladies in from Sweden (although it took a while to track Ingmari down because she was in a cosmic retreat with no communication with the outside). There is something timeless about that Swedish aesthetic that helped to sell the idea that the characters were deeply connected."