"Hands" is the first single released from Jewel Kilcher's second album, Spirit (1998). A "Christmas version" of the song appears on Joy: A Holiday Collection.

No commercial single was ever issued in the United States, and the singles that were issued internationally received the album version. The radio edit can be found only on promos for the single. Even without a physical release, the song still reached number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and the video reached #1 on VH1's Top 10 Countdown.

The video, directed by Nick Brandt, begins with Jewel driving along on a rainy night when she comes across emergency workers responding to a collapsed apartment building. She gets out of her car and stands with the crowd looking at the rubble and notices other onlookers walking away in horror and hopelessness. She follows others into the rubble and helps dig through the rubble for survivors, finding a man, alive, under the rubble and later three young children trapped inside a room. Throughout the whole video, she remains calm and collected, full of hope, as chaos ensues around her.

She explains the idea behind the video in an interview in 1998:

"I think the director just wanted to picture an earthquake. That gave the video a somber feel to the aftermath of the disaster."

Right after 9/11, a DJ remixed the song which was carried on stations across the country. Jewel was in the mountains with her longtime boyfriend, Ty Murray, during the attack, and she first heard this version on the radio a few days later—it was one of the first things she heard. She spoke of this experience at a Borders concert in Ann Arbor, MI prior to the release of Perfectly Clear.

Jewel appeared on Late Show with David Letterman just one week after the tragedy, on Tuesday, September 18, 2001, and performed this song instead of the previously scheduled "Standing Still."

This song is also used during Rachel's Challenge.

In 2016, the song was covered by country singer Trisha Yearwood for the US version of the musical The Passion.

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Wikipedia