Empty streets from around the world. That’s what you will see in Maalavika Manoj’s quarantine-inspired video, Age of Limbo, which drops on YouTube on May 1. Featuring drone and mobile footage from 12 countries and 15 cities, the singer-songwriter based in Mumbai requested friends and fans to partake in the making of her latest single by sending her footage from wherever they lived. After announcing it on her Instagram stories last month, she tells us that the response was well beyond what she anticipated. “I received over a hundred video clips of empty streets from their own neighbourhoods,” she says.

Edited by the talented Jishnu Guha, the visuals transport us into what she calls a “suspended reality” from Mumbai, Bengaluru and Guwahati, and hops across continents to Sao Paulo, San Francisco, Austria, Sweden, Italy and London. It’s a lyric video, which although doesn’t have Mali herself in it, draws you in and keeps you hooked to the very end, resonating a feeling that many have struggled with during this lockdown — uncertainty. And the 26-year-old, better known by her stage name Mali, manages this beautifully, minus any fear-provoking imagery of panic or chaos making an appearance.

Instead, expect to see blue skies, perfect sunsets and beautiful aerial views of houses, skyscrapers and clock towers. Except, she points out, “There’s an underlying dystopian feeling around it, with no people in sight.” She isn’t kidding — there are more crows than people in this video.