Two days before her new album was launched, musical icon Vivir Quintana was behind barbed wire at a women’s prison in Mexico. The singer had spent the past 10 years visiting women incarcerated after defending themselves and, in doing so, killing their abusers.

Their stories became part of “Cosas que Sorprenden a la Audiencia” (Things that Surprise the Audience), Quintana’s latest album, released Thursday.

It tells the story of 10 such women but in a first, Quintana does it through “corridos,” a typically male-dominated and controversial Mexican music genre that’s soared into the spotlight in recent years.