"Kill V. Maim" is Art Angels’ most bracing action scene—and, as ever, Claire Boucher plays all the roles. In a sole pre-chorus, over stadium-crushing beats, you can hear a whole lineage of pop defiance: Grimes morphs from a metallic growl à la Onobox to a sly Barbie-via-Nicki hair-flip to a deranged cheerleader taunt (with the particular ear-piercing squeal of Brittany from "Daria"). At least conceptually, her pivoting vocal escapades recall Kathleen Hanna in Bikini Kill—how Hanna contorted her voice to show that identities are performed (indeed, Art Angels feels like the album that Hanna’s l'écriture féminine Julie Ruin character dreamed of). No one can sing the words "Italiana mobster looking so precious" with quite the naturalistic ease of Grimes; still, "I’m only a man, and I do what I can" might be her most subversive and quotable couplet ever. "Kill V. Maim" is Grimes as pure iconoclast. No one else in pop—mainstream, avant-garde, or otherwise—could do this, and it’s hard to imagine that anyone would even try.

Boucher says "Kill V. Maim"—with its storyline of an unstoppable villain on her worst behavior—was "written from the perspective of Al Pacino in The Godfather Pt. 2, except he’s a vampire who can switch gender and travel through space." It’s some kind of a miracle that you could start there and end up with an interstellar banger like this. Even among Art Angels’ raw balladeering and its throat-scraping screams of Pharmakon-calibre, "Kill V. Maim" emerges as the record’s daring peak. It’s a hype song for all the kids who almost got beat-up at Homecoming—the sound of a secret pep-rally for the freaks. —Jenn Pelly

Grimes: "Kill V. Maim"