You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and,
piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.
My name is Tao Nguyen.
Natasha Khan makes music under the name Bat For Lashes.
She's released five albums, including Lost Girls, which came out in September 2019.
In this episode,
she breaks down the making of the lead single from that album called Kids in the Dark.
But just before she started writing it, she wasn't sure if she would make another album at all.
I'm Natasha of Bat for Lashes.
I had been living in LA for six months and I moved from London and basically decided that I was never going to make an album again.
I'd come off a 10-year major label deal and was feeling a bit cynical and fed up and I just decided to move to sunny California to pursue script writing.
I was developing a script called The Lost Girls,
which was essentially about this renegade biker gang of vampire witches that were trawling around L.A.,
you know, like possibly murdering people.
And at the time, I was doing a lot of late night driving around L.A.,
listening to electronic music like Comtruse.
I was driving to Death Valley, Joshua Tree, up to the Sequoias, you know,
just sort of absorbing these pastel sunsets, you know, feet on the dashboard, hands out the window.
And I was just imagining this biker gang of witchy girls that come from the desert and what it might feel like
if I saw them following me on bikes or creeping in my yard or