Kurdish pop diva’s anti-IS anthem is lighting up the internet

Singer Helly Luv is the most popular cheerleader for the Iraqi Kurds’ war against jihadists. Her latest music video, for a song titled “Revolution,” opens with a peshmerga fighter looking at a picture of himself with a young boy, presumably his son, as shelling and gunfire are heard in the background. He tucks the photo inside his helmet and goes to fight. Helly Luv – wearing golden high heels with a white and red scarf covering her face – stops an IS tanker entering a village while singing about a call to arms.

I want to give something to the peshmerga because I consider myself one of them. I wore peshmerga clothes in the song to support them.

Helly Luv, 26, singer

Helly Luv visits peshmerga forces fighting the Islamic State group, which overran a third of Iraq last year, and says she filmed her latest music video in Al-Khazr, not far from the jihadists’ lines. The music video, for a song called ‘Revolution’, is a call “for Kurdistan and the countries of the world to unite to fight terrorism and injustice,“ she said. The video had been viewed more than 700,000 times by Saturday.

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