"Burn the Witch" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead, released as the lead single from their ninth studio album, A Moon Shaped Pool (2016).

It was accompanied by a stop-motion animated music video that pays homage to the 1960s children's television series Trumptonshire and the 1973 horror film The Wicker Man.

[6] Asked in 2013 about "Burn the Witch" and Radiohead's other unreleased songs, their producer, Nigel Godrich responded: "Everything will surface one day... it all exists... and so it will eventually get there, I'm sure.

[16] The lyrics direct the listener to "abandon all reason / avoid all eye contact / do not react / shoot the messengers / burn the witch".

[13] The Guardian felt it addressed mass surveillance or the threat to open discussion posed by the self-policing users of social media.

[2] The Pitchfork writer Marc Hogan suggested that the idyllic rural Britain depicted in the video addressed the rhetoric of "family values" used by right-wing politicians such as Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and members of the UK Independence Party.

[24][25] The animator Virpi Kettu, who worked on the music video, interpreted the song as a comment on the European migrant crisis and scapegoating of Muslims.

The visual style was deliberately lighter in tone than the song, as Kettu said Radiohead "wanted the video to contrast with what they're playing and to wake people up a bit".

[13] Michael Hann of The Guardian called it "thrilling ... certainly the kind of return – bold and expansive, as well as dark and claustrophobic – that the world might have hoped for".

[2] Larry Bartleet of NME wrote that "a Radiohead melody has rarely sounded this joyful or indulgent, which puts the disturbing lyrics into especially sharp relief".

"[15] However, Alex Hudson of Metro criticised the lyrics and rhythm, writing: "It is not the Radiohead of old: taking underground musical movements and turning them into a mass market record ...

"[34] The New Republic writer Ryan Kearney criticised the abundance of common phrases such as "shoot the messengers", writing that Yorke was "the most overrated lyricist in music today".

[16] Billboard named it the 19th-best pop song of 2016,[36] and the annual Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll ranked it number 12.