Fiona Apple is clearly not compelled to release music just to satiate the demands of the marketplace, so when she emerges with new original material for the first time in five years, there’s little doubt that she has a compelling reason to do so. Her new track, “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home),” is as riveting and inventive as everything on her most recent LP masterwork, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. It carries the same feminist fury as all her best work, and, uncommonly for Apple, it’s also more explicit a protest song. In her own words:

I was a court watcher for over two years. In that time, I took notes on thousands of bond hearings. Time and time again, I listened as people were taken away and put in jail, for no other reason than that they couldn’t afford to buy their way free. It was particularly hard to hear mothers and caretakers get taken away from the people who depend on them.

For the past five years, I have been volunteering with the Free Black Mamas DMV bailout, and I have been lucky to be able to witness the stories of women who fought for and won their freedom with the tireless and loving support of the leadership. I hope that this song, and the images shared with me, can help to show what is at stake when someone is kept in pretrial detention. I give this song in friendship and respect to all who have experienced the pain of pretrial detention and to the women of the group’s leadership who have taught me so much and whom I truly love.

For more information about Free Black Mamas DMV, visit their website.