You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
Casey Dinell is a producer, singer, and songwriter who goes by the name White Hinterland.
In this episode, she'll break down her song Ring the Bell.
To make it, she had to break out of her comfort zone of working alone and reach out to other people.
She got a little unexpected help from Beyonce.
Here's the exploded view of the song Ring the Bell.
My name is Casey Dinell, and I am the singer-writer, I guess, for White Hinterland.
Day to day, it's a solo project.
In 2010, I was touring, and the opening melody,
the chords that are just like... just popped in my head.
and then I ran to the practice space and we like banged out a little demo.
The way that my songs tend to work is that I create like a big mound of clay.
I work backwards so rather than starting from nothing I like to have a lot of things to choose from and then just viciously cut away at it until I feel like I'm getting at the heart of whatever it is that I'm trying to experience or feel.
Once I kind of commit words to a melody,
it's really hard for me to go back from that
because it's almost like the way that I write lyrics is like they have the melody in them.
I never shoehorn words into the melody.
I find that the words kind of carry their own intonation, and then I have to find a way.