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.
Just a heads up for any parents who listen with their kids,
there's some maybe PG-13 stuff in this episode.
Nothing major, but use your discretion.
Japanese Breakfast is the musical project of Michelle Zahner.
who's been making music under that name since 2013.
In July 2017, she released her second album, Soft Sounds from Another Planet.
In this episode, Michelle breaks down a song from that album called Boyish,
along with her co-producer and bandmate Craig Hendrix.
We'll hear the original demo, plus a version Michelle recorded with her old band.
And she'll talk about how her perspective on the song has changed over the years.
I'm Michelle Zahner, and my band is called Japanese Breakfast.
The first version of Boyish was written and recorded in June of 2013.
I was in another band called Little Big League,
and we were just starting to work on our second album.
But I felt creatively stifled.
So I started this sort of like lo-fi recording project called June,
which was actually the first thing I ever made as Japanese Breakfast,