Sade Strikes Back! The '80s soul star unleashes a surge of dancing desert soldiers

British soul band Sade—yep, “Smooth Operator” Sade is a band—is back from a ten-year hiatus with the video for “Soldier of Love,” the first single from their upcoming album of the same name. What has lead singer Sade Adu been doing for the last decade? Perhaps traveling coast-to-coast, L.A. to Chicago on foot? Who knows, but as you can see from the moody video below, she hasn’t lost any of her enigmatic aura.

“Soldier of Love” is a laid-back R&B jam dolled up with some Ennio Morricone flourishes, and appropriately enough the video is set in the desert, or as she calls it here, “the hinterland of my devotion.” Dressed like Trinity from The Matrix and doing some lasso work George Bailey would be jealous of, Sade performs against a backdrop of barren red desert and menacingly cloudy skies. (Maybe she’s a fan of Dune, too.) Accompanying her is a troupe of backup dancers doing things desert soldiers are wont to do, like military-march-styled dance moves and synchronized push-ups.

What do you think—is this tune worth the ten-year wait? And how about the video? Does it hold a flare gun to Rihanna’s “Hard” video, which also featured army-tastic dancing in the desert?

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