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 Herway.

In this episode, Bethany Kossentino and Bob Bruno of the band Best Coast take apart their song Feeling Okay, from the 2015 album, California Nights.

They trace their process and their influences from the movie Tim Things I Hate About You to the Video Game Rock Band.

Plus, we'll hear from producer Wally Gagel, special thanks to Peketo and the Line Hotel, who hosted the live song Exploder event in Los Angeles, where I recorded my interview with Bethany.

Now, here's Best Coast on Song Exploder.

My name is Bethany Kossentino. When I wrote this song, I wanted there to be a positive sort of vibe behind the song, lyrically and melodically.

So when I sat down to start working on it, I think that was like the thing in mind was like, okay, stay positive, or as positive as you can be, because I'm not always the most positive person.

I have a couple different guitars that I use at home when I'm writing. I don't play very intricate guitar parts, so I like a guitar that is lightweight and easy for me to hold.

I don't need anything super fancy, because I'm just playing power chords.

With this song, and you know, with pretty much every best-cut song, I'll record it until it feels strong enough that I can send it to Bob and say, hey, this is what I'm thinking of what I want the rest of the song to be.

Can you fill in those parts?

My name is Bob Bruno. I play guitar in best-cuts.

The whole guitar intro, that was me trying to do an arpeggiated 80s synth part, but to play it on guitar.

That kind of thing happens a lot on the California Night's record.

I got really into like, Andy Summers from the police. If you basically listen to like, every breath you take, it's like, that's the whole guitar part.

And that came out of from playing a play rock band a lot.

There's something about the game when, because the actual tracks are kind of parted out for the gameplay, the mixes in the game sound a little different than what the actual recordings are.

His guitar parts on the police songs that I was playing in that game, they just stood out more in the mix while I was playing, and so I just stood in the back of my mind.

It was like, oh, that's a cool thing. And again, while not trying to make this like an 80s synth pop song, I still want to have like something that kind of conveyed that feeling.

It's just kind of like, you know, our messed up version of that, which is pretty much everything in best-cuts is our messed up version of something.

For me, when I listen back to my own lyrics, when a song is done, I'll kind of look at it and then think, okay, now I know what this is about.

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