This was Imogen Heap's contribution to the compilation Plague Songs, a musical retelling of the 10 Plagues of Egypt from the Old Testament's Book of Exodus. The project was commissioned by the British arts organization Artangel, and Heap was tasked to cover the Plague of Locusts. For the album booklet, she described her experience creating the song: "My mission, should I choose to accept it was 'to write a song about locusts.' That had to be the strangest request I've ever had so of course I took it on! What I had no idea of is that for the most part our locust is actually a pretty nice solitary kinda guy. It's only until the rains fall and they're forced to hand out together to eat and breed they become the creature we all know and hate ... Our locust is battling between his two sides. In the verses he's trying to explain that he's misunderstood, that he's not really like that and in the chorus, he's become the tribal crop-eating warrior! I thought that when they are swarming they're probably having a fantastic time about it. Hedonistic even. I imagined them all at some huge rave or something."
Rufus Wainwright, Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno, and Scott Walker also appear on the album, among others.
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