"The Islander" is the tenth track on symphonic metal band Nightwish’s Dark Passion Play album. It was confirmed to be the album's fifth single on the website Nightwish-World on February 23, 2008, only a week after the fourth single, "Bye Bye Beautiful", was released. It was released on May 21, 2008, and the video itself premiered on April 14, 2008.

As with some of Nightwish' other songs (including for example "Creek Mary's Blood" from Once), the song is highly influenced by folk music rather than the symphonic power metal they usually play, and uses only acoustic guitars, rather than electric. It is fully acoustic, except the use of some keyboard effects and drums, though folk-inspired. Marco Hietala sings the whole song with backing vocals from Anette Olzon and Tuomas Holopainen. He also wrote most of the music for the song, unlike most others, which were written by Tuomas Holopainen. The song used guest musician Troy Donockley who is featured on several instruments.

The single features an instrumental version of Dark Passion Play's bonus track "Escapist" as well as an orchestral version of "Meadows of Heaven". It also features the videos to "The Islander" and "Bye Bye Beautiful".

The music video was filmed in Rovaniemi, in Finnish Lapland, in October 2007, and Holopainen commented that they at first didn't plan to make a third video for the album, but when they were offered Finnish beauty, they couldn't resist it. He has also said that for once the lyrics actually fits with the video, which is "a sort of Lapp wilderness combined with the surrealism of Salvador Dalí." The video features guest musician Troy Donockley, who would later become an official member of Nightwish.

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Wikipedia