This CD cover image released by Interscope Records shows "Rebel Heart," the latest release by Madonna.

Madonna’s 12 previous albums — “Like a Virgin,” “Bedtime Stories” and her relatively epic “Confessions on a Dance Floor,” to name a few — confirm her branding technique, each connecting a concrete idea with themes conveyed through the songs, more or less. The outlier, her forgettable last album, “MDNA,” was a coy reference to the drug MDMA (Ecstasy).

Her latest, “Rebel Heart,” is a far better album than “MDNA” — cleaner, crisper, less a flimsy attempt at drawing fickle youth ears and more a sturdy rhythmic platform to showcase some of the most striking tracks she’s made in 15 years.

From the start, “Rebel Heart” spotlights a clarity of intention, one the artist conveys in notes that accompanied the release: “I knew I wanted to explore the duality of my personality, which is renegade and romantic. And I wanted to write good songs. That’s it.”

Featuring production by artists including Avicii, Diplo, Kanye West and Sophie and guests including Chance the Rapper, Nicki Minaj and Mike Tyson, it has completeness to it rather than the mishmash of could-be stabs at relevance that dots her lesser work.

Madonna cites as inspiration rebels such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley and John Lennon, all of whom “changed the world. They took the road less traveled and they made all the difference. You can’t be a rebel and not be willing to take the consequences.”

Regardless, hers is a noble goal, even if the stakes in her brand of rebellion are hardly of apartheid proportions. Focus, though, drives tracks such as “Illuminati,” “Joan of Arc” and “Iconic” into that sweet spot between club frenzy and revelatory lyricism, the kind that can lift spirits to emotional heights.

They display a master of dance pop harnessing a mostly male team of contemporary beat producers and songwriters to merge word and rhythm. She explores ego-tastic peaks; devotion; the desire for salvation and the allure, and destructiveness, of drug-fueled revelry; bodily fluids; and in the defiant, minor-key “HeartBreakCity,” snare-rolling confessions.

“Holy Water” is the weakest of the bunch. She raps during “Illuminati” — and doesn’t sound totally ridiculous, no small feat. That one, a Kanye West-co-produced shout-out to the all-seeing eye and the secretive group of would-be mystics, is one of the record’s highlights.

Granted, the struggles our heroine describes must be endured by conformists and rebels alike. Even bland office drones suffer heartbreak. Still, she’s not trying to fool anyone on “Rebel Heart.”