Just after dropping her new album, Dirty Computer, Janelle Monáe returns with a short film titled the same as her album.

“Dirty Computer is a near-future story about a citizen who finds love and danger in a totalitarian society,” she said. That citizen is Jane 57821, who has watched the world around her change, and her fellow citizens be stripped of their humanity. (In this society, humans are referred to as “computers,” explaining the title of both the album and the short film.) Jane 57821 has elected to become an “outlaw” in order to operate outside the swiftly-narrowing confines of that world. As minds and machines merge around her, she clings tightly to her personality; in Monáe’s own words, “She’s an outlaw because she’s being herself.”

The singer-songwriter also states in a voiceover in the first few seconds of the short film:

“They started calling us computers. People began vanishing. And the cleaning began. You were dirty if you looked different. You were dirty if you refused to live the way they dictated. You were dirty if you showed any form of opposition. At all. And if you were dirty… it was only a matter of time.”

Take a look at the short film below and let us know what you think.