"Hands Clean" is a song recorded by Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, for her fifth studio album, Under Rug Swept, which she released in 2002. It was written, composed, and produced by Morissette herself, and released as the album's lead single on 8 February 2002. It is a pop rock song, featuring a shuffling, largely acoustic-rock framework. Lyrically, "Hands Clean" caused controversy, since it is reportedly the singer’s recollection of a forbidden sexual relationship she shared with a much older man when she was approximately 14 years of age.

The song received generally positive reviews from music critics, some of whom immediately chose the track as an album standout compared to some of her previous material. "Hands Clean" did well through the charts. The song peaked at number 23 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The song also peaked at number three on the U.S. Adult Top 40 and topped the charts in New Zealand (Morissette's first number one - and, to date, her last single to appear on the New Zealand charts) and Canada. An accompanying music video was released in 2002 for the single.

After releasing Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, the 1998 follow-up to her 1995 breakthrough album Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette joined MTV for an unplugged album, released in 1999. After that, Morissette stopped either writing or composing for a few months, before developing a new album, through 2000 and 2001. According to Jennifer Vineyeard of MTV News, the album's topic is "love, sex, cruelty - with the added vantage of years spent growing up and getting over the man who vexed her so." When Morissette wrote, composed, and produced Under Rug Swept, which she did all by herself, the singer claimed that she was inspired by many events in her life, such as the break up with her boyfriend, her contract's renegotiation with Maverick, among other issues. I started writing alone, and within the first week I'd written seven songs. So it was all really fast and accelerated, and I think 'Hands Clean' was maybe the 10th song that I wrote and I just wrote it with a guitar in a room. After writing 27 songs for the album, "Hands Clean" was picked to be the first single of the album, being released on 8 February 2002.

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