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.

This episode contains explicit language.

Monica Martin is a singer and songwriter based in Los Angeles. Before that, she was based in Madison, Wisconsin,

where she was part of the Indy Rock band Fox.

She's been a featured guest vocalist on songs by James Blake and Wolfpeck. In this episode, Monica breaks down her song, Go Easy Kid, along with a track's producer, Kushy.

She talks about making a song that's in part about how hard it can be to make a song, and more generally, how hard it can be to let go of the things we get hung up on.

My name is Monica Martin. I started writing songs for an Indy band that I was in, and I wrote probably a couple of songs that I wrote for the first time.

I wrote a song that I wrote for the first time. I wrote a song that I wrote for the first time.

I wrote a song that I wrote for the first time, at a fairly glacial pace, but I think it's because I know when everybody has a deep feeling and I try to avoid that at all costs.

over the last five years since I started trying to get to know myself

outside of the context of being in a band.

I was talking with a good friend of mine, Theo Katsman.

He writes a lot of songs and yeah, we've had many conversations about not finishing songs

or avoiding getting even in the space of chewing on our emotions to like turn it into words.

I'm like, wow, can you believe that we're spiraling out about this stuff?

Because our job is like making three minute diddies.

And then we like, this is silly.

We're writing songs.

Let's just put it out and be less precious.

And then of course, the other side of that in me is like how important music has been for us.

Like when people put things into words that we felt and they say it in a way that's so clear.

And it's like, oh gosh, that's so important.

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