For an interview with Pitchfork in which he spoke about each song on Negro Swan, Dev Hynes provided insight into “Holy Will”:

Pitchfork: You’ve touched on the idea of religion on past albums, and how people love the hope it gives them. Is the gospel performance by singer Ian Isiah here meant to evoke that feeling?.

Dev Hynes: Yeah, that whole moment is super, super deliberate. “Holy Will” is like church on Sunday after going out Saturday. It’s the cleanse. I always loved [gospel group] the Clark Sisters, and me and Ian Isiah would always be singing stuff, and one day we were in L.A. and decided to fuck around. The skeleton of the track is a one-take of me on guitar, and Ian and [collaborator] Eva singing [the Clark Sisters’ “Center of Thy Will”] live. When it kicks off, it’s so far from what you think would be on a Blood Orange album, but as it progresses, when the synths come in, I wanted to pull you back into familiarity with things that you do associate with me. It’s not intentional, but I’ve realized that every Blood Orange album has a cover song on it. It just happens, somehow.