Songfacts®:

• The Ting Tings - the British duo of Katie White and Jules De Martino - had a surprise hit with "That's Not My Name" from their 2008 debut album, We Started Nothing. "Hands," released in 2010, was the first single from their next album, set to be titled Massage Kunst, a reference to where they recorded it: in a German jazz club. The song premiered on BBC Radio 1 in the UK on August 18, 2010 and was well received, climbing to #29 in the UK.
  
  But instead of delivering the album, they decided to go in a different music direction, so they scrapped it - like, actually erased the tapes. This kind of self-sabatoge is very unusual in the music industry, but The Ting Tings were always more concerned with their creative output.
  
  Their second album ended up being titled Sounds From Nowheresville and was released in 2012. "Hands" shows up on the deluxe edition.
• This was the first song the pair wrote after an exhausting year and a half on the road, which is reflected when Katie White sings, "clap your hands if you're working too hard." She explained the lyric to Spinner UK: "Traveling around the world, we saw how hard people worked. With our hectic tour schedule, we experienced it firsthand. People should have a little more time for themselves."
• The Ting Tings hooked up with their label mate - electro DJ and producer Calvin Harris - for this song. The Scottish dance musician had previously done a few remixes for their hit single, "We Started Nothing." "We record our own music and play all the parts, so like on our first record it was important for us to get some distance from our production in the mix process," White told Spinner UK. "Calvin creates amazing pop mixes with his own music. We imagine him to work in similar ways to ourselves, avoiding many traditional recording methods in commercial conveyor-type studios. All our best music is produced in a self-created bubble zone, a personal space, carving up ideas and impatiently recording live performances. He was quick as hell and nailed all the main points of the track instantly. A good mix should make you feel even better about your track. We lost nothing and gained everything with his mix."
• This is not the only song on the album that deals with the subject matter of overworking. Jules De Martino of the Ting Tings told the NME: "Our A&R man (Mike Pickering) came round to have a listen to some of the stuff we'd been working on. We played him 'Hands,' which is about working too hard, then 'Day To Day', similar theme, then 'Help'… By the fourth track he was like, 'Ok, I think I see what this record is about…"
• The song was meant to be an underground, white label-only release, but The Ting Tings' label, Columbia, got it playlisted on BBC Radio 1, to the duo's chagrin.
• Talking about their time making this song and their aborted second album, Jules De Martino explained to Songfacts: "We had moved to Berlin. We spent so much time on tour on the first album we had become over-animated and larger than life. Starting to record the dreaded album two was a pain. We couldn't settle down from filling the stage. Berlin and Bowie made us feel industrial, and moving to Berlin to follow such a musical hero also made us isolated and brought us back down with a bump. I wished we had come off tour earlier, but we were naive and management were just probably thinking about coining it."
• The Ting Tings make very eye-catching videos. In "Hands," we see a man and woman working in an underground factory, overseen by an AI overlord (prescient for 2010). After Katie White destroys their electronic master, they rise to the surface and see the sun.
  
  The video was directed by Warren Fu, who also later helmed "I Feel It Coming" by The Weeknd and "Kiss Me More" by Doja Cat.