Cicadas And Gulls

After an exhausting year touring the world and plugging her successful The Reminder album, Feist arrived home in November 2008 ready to flake out. That winter she penned at home the beginnings of this track in which she compares nature to existential questioning. It proved to be a watershed moment for her follow up record, Metals. "I had just come off the road. I remember being in my bedroom, where I have a fireplace, and it was one of those freezing cold winter nights so I started a fire," she recalled to Spin magazine. "All the lights were off and I was alone. I thought, 'Maybe I'll never tour again. But maybe I'll try to play guitar, because I used to like doing it.' I remember thinking, 'I'm going to try and write something I've never written before.' That's a good mindset to get into. A little stretching assignment to help think about music differently."

The song's music video features Feist performing the song, accompanied by some interpretive dancing from the Oakland dance crew Turf Feinz.