The lyrics explore the pressure Björk felt to write music after realising the workforce that depended on her, following the success she found as a solo artist with her previous studio albums.

A collaborative effort between Björk and Mark Bell, "Hunter" features a dark combination of strings and layered synths, a militaristic electronic beat, and enigmatic lyrics about the heading towards a mission.

The accompanying music video for "Hunter" was directed by longtime collaborator Paul White of Me Company and consists of a close-up of a bald Björk as she transforms into a "techno-bear" while singing.

It blends the live sound of the Icelandic String Octet —orchestrated by Eumir Deodato—, Yasuhiro Kobayashi's accordion and "stuttering computer beats and beeps" programmed by Mark Bell.

[1] Music journalist Evelyn McDonnell wrote "the production showed Björk's steeping in the cutting edge of electronic dance-music culture, her embrace of techno futurism, her time spent pulling all-nighters in London clubs.

[2] According to Ray Gun, "Hunter" evokes an eerie terrain with rolling techno beats and strings penetrating the air like a toxic fog.

They have been described as what "[ties] the whole shebang together together [...]: full of reverberating menace and trepidation on the verses, then bursting into full-throated confession, layers of her voice pitching next to each other then cascading together".

[8] Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine noted self-mockery towards "her own idyllic disposition" in the lyrics "I thought I could organize freedom / How Scandinavian of me!

"[11] After the success Björk encountered as a solo artist with Debut (1993) and Post (1995) — her most promoted album —, she began to feel more pressured as she noticed how her creative output directly affected the life of those around her.

"[20] In a review for the single release, Keir Langley of AllMusic praised the rhythm and intensity of the track as a showcase of her collaboration with Mark Bell.

[1] Phil Freeman included "Hunter" in his list of songs which "say something important about the state of music since 1979—how venerable forms have changed;" inspired by Greil Marcus' attempt to define rock and roll in Stranded (1978).

He wrote "her voice is protean and capable of astonishingly raw, forceful outbursts, but it's when she holds it in, on tracks like this one, that her real power emerges.

They state that, by assuming the position of authority in relation to the masculine other, Björk challenges the traditional notions of femininity; and that by "[leaving] to be the hunter," she "disrupts the nature/culture binary of which Haraway speaks.

"[23] The music video for "Hunter" was directed by longtime collaborator Paul White from Me Company, the design firm that produced the artwork of Homogenic and Post, and their respective singles.

The live-action portion of the video was shot in London in 12 takes, with Björk performing in front of a green screen; she wore makeup to simulate baldness and tracking markers were applied to her head and face for subsequent computer graphics work.

The irony of the digital age is that, as technology gets more invisible, people are more interested in being able to see it again, as in Apple Computer's iMac, with its translucent blues and milky plastics that simultaneously tease and reveal.

[24] By combining patch deformation and shape interpolation, the emerging bear head was created, composed of "100 maneuverable platelets that rise up through the skin.

"[24] Finally, rendering was completed using Pixar's RenderMan, a holographic shader was used to make the bear skin colors change, and all the computer graphics were added to the live-action footage.

Freeze Frame deemed the video "primal" and complimented Björk on keeping the attention of the viewer by only showing her head and shoulders, thus comparing it to "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel.

Magazine praised its special effects, writing they "reach a new level of detail in [the music video]" and compared the singer's transformation to that of the title character in Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

[4] Cultural theorist Dominic Pettman, while analyzing the "becoming-animal" theorized by Deleuze and Guattari, found that the video for "Hunter" —along with the character Treadwell in Herzog's Grizzly Man— embodied various points these philosophers studied regarding that concept.

[25] Shirley R. Steinberg and Donaldo Pereira Macedo wrote that in the music video, Donna Haraway's metaphor of A Cyborg Manifesto appears in "Björks embodiment of a human-animal-machine hybrid.

[29][30] That July, Björk performed the whole album for a press conference and presentation concert regarding Homogenic at the Old Truman Building, an old beer factory in London, wearing the same outfit.

[34] The song was part of the set list of the Homogenic tour which Björk embarked with Mark Bell and the Icelandic String Octet from late 1997 to early 1999.

Brian Orloff from the Tampa Bay Times was impressed with the cover version, writing that Thirty Seconds to Mars erects "riveting tension" in its "almost trip-hop" rendition of the song.

"[43] Kaj Roth from Melodic felt that the band "really caught the spirit" of the song;[44] however, Kirsty Krampf of DIY thought it was "a criminal re-hash.

"[45] A version of the song was produced for the 2019 film Terminator: Dark Fate by an artist named Riaya featuring John Mark McMillan on vocals.