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.

Churches is a trio from Glasgow, Scotland.

In this episode, they break down the song Clearest Blue from their sophomore album Every Open Eye.

You'll hear the band's original demo as well as why they start songs with a set of rules, but then quickly abandon those rules.

This interview was recorded live at the Dropbox Podcast studio at South by Southwest.

I'm Martin and I play keys and stuff.

I'm Lauren and I sing.

I'm Ian and I also play keys and stuff.

We were trying to make a laid-back song with me.

Honestly, I swear, I swear.

That's the thing about this band though, we always set it with rules.

And then we're useless at sticking to them.

The other rule for this song was let's do a song with two chords.

And of course, ten minutes later, Martin's off on another, you know, with the minor.

But we're terrible at sticking to rules with this.

You know, that's the fun part is like creating boundaries and then smashing them, you know.

You have these reference points and rules as Ian says.

And they're a great place to start in the creative process.

A really important thing to have a...

Today we're going to try and achieve XYZ.

And then you start to try and do it and it doesn't quite work out where you plan it.

...