It's called hagwalah and nine times out of ten you've seen it in grainy cell phone video shot from the side of a Saudi highway, but now it's the high-def backdrop of M.I.A.'s surprisingly car-centric video, shot in the Middle East.


There aren't any cars spinning past school busses while shooting assault rifles out the window, but you get all the other tropes of hagwalah hoonage: cars on two wheels, front-wheel-drive cars drifting through traffic and passengers dancing out the car at highway speeds.


Finally, the car selection is really perfect: instead of supercars sittin' sideways, cruising at five miles an hour, we get ‘90s BMWs, Mercs and one dirty Alfa Romeo 156, all spinning like tops through the desert. There's even a see-through Peugeot 404 wagon. It's like the director had been reading Jalopnik's music video wish list or something.

(Hat tip to Planet Nation!)