M.I.A. has released her new video for "Double Bubble Trouble," the fifth single off of her 2013 album Matangi. As one might expect from the the singer, who directed the video herself, it's a GIF party of youth culture signifiers.
Selfies. FaceTime. An Ultimaker 3-D printer. The words "Yes We Scan" in macro-rific Impact type. Dingy apartment buildings that Larry Clark would kill for.
There are references to surveillance, Islam, and crime on both the personal and the political level. Women wear niqabs with Lynchian faces printed on them. (A cursory Google search turned up nothing on these; chime in if you know who makes them.) Toy drones in the shape of peace signs hover above a troupe of dancers, contrasted with a copy of Ruben Pater's Drone Survival Guide tacked to a wall. There are guns, guns, guns galore, some of them 3-D printed.
M.I.A.'s political message is present; though, it's a bit hazier here than it was in "Bad Girls" and its alliance with the Saudi "women to drive" movement. Blame that haze on the hookah smoke — from real hookahs and e-hookahs — exhaled in geometrically improbable shapes by young men.
Fun stuff. (Pitchfork)