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, your way.

I love origin stories.

This episode isn't just about how a song got made.

It's a story of how the making of that song led to a band being formed.

The band, always.

Always is from Toronto.

Their first album came out in 2014, and they've put out two other albums since then.

In Canada, they won the June Award for Alternative Album of the Year,

and all three of their albums have been shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize.

Their first song was also one of their biggest hits.

It's called Archie Marry Me.

Rolling Stone and Stereo Gum named it one of the best songs of the last decade.

So for this episode, I talked about it with Molly Rankin and Alco Hanley from the band.

The two of them are pretty quiet about their relationship, other than being bandmates.

But they told me a lot about this song, which I would count nowadays as an indie rock classic.

I'm Molly Rankin from Always.

I sing and write songs and play guitar.

I'm Alico Hanley, and I do all those things to a lesser degree.

I grew up in Cape Breton, and Alic grew up on Prince Edward Island,

this province in Canada.

Molly had sung on some records of some friends.

...