Charli XCX releases gun-filled new video for ‘You (Ha Ha Ha)’

With impressive disregard for widespread hand-wringing over the glamorization of violence in media, Charli XCX released a new music video Thursday in which the English pop singer more or less throws a rave inside a gun factory.

Based on a sizable sample from a 2010 track by Gold Panda, “You (Ha Ha Ha)” feels considerably cheerier than previous Charli XCX singles such as “Nuclear Seasons” and “You’re the One,” the latter of which could easily pass for something by the great Russian goth-rave duo t.A.T.u. (We at Pop & Hiss will forever carry a torch for “All the Things She Said.”)

Yet the video counters the music’s good vibes with shots of bullets, machine-gun fire and a disembodied heart. Or perhaps it’s only emphasizing the joviality, as Charli XCX and her neon-clad pals appear to be having one heck of a time.

“We’d been heavily influenced by the world of Tumblr superstars and the quick-click, pop-tastic world of the Internet in my previous videos, so this time we decided to look elsewhere,” the singer told Pitchfork. “We’d been watching a lot of grindhouse movies -- mostly with strong female leads, like ‘The Pom Pom Girls’ and ‘Coffy’ -- and there seemed to be a bizarre crossover from that genre of cinema and today’s world of pop. Shooting the video in a gun factory seemed like the perfect grindhouse setting for a kick-ass girl-power story, with super-pretty girls swapping the bullets for lipstick.”

In addition to the munitions, “You (Ha Ha Ha)” -- which arrives ahead of Charli XCX’s major-label debut, due out this spring -- contains a handful of naughty words, so we can’t show it to you here. Watch it over on YouTube.

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