Swords

This song is built around rapidly ringing percussion, sampled from the metallic clanging of swords. M.I.A. recorded the track and its accompanying video on the fly in India, after an Indian fan tweeted her with a GIF of a girl sword fighting. "I took this trip," she explained on Zane Lowe's Beats 1 show. "I happened to be in India so I tracked this person down. 24 hours later I was with these people." M.I.A. shot a video in a tenth century temple, then drove immediately to a studio, where the song was pieced together overnight.

M.I.A's first single since 2013's "Matangi," the song was recorded for the singer's Matahdatah album. It is also part of an audiovisual project, released on Apple Music, titled Matahdatah Scroll 01 Broader Than a Border.