My name is Rishi Kei Shirewei. I'm the producer of Song Exploder and I'm usually the host,

but for this episode I wanted to try something different. I'm handing the interviewing and

hosting duties over to someone else. Back in 2016 I did an episode with Tao Wyn from the band Tao

and the get-down stay-down, and we had such a great conversation and I thought she really got

the heart of what this podcast is about. So I asked her and she said yes. There's also brand-new

intro music just for this made by another past guest, Julian Baker. This episode was really fun

to make and I hope you like it. Here we go. You're listening to Song Exploder. We're musicians

take apart their songs and piece by piece. Tell the story of how they remained. My name is Tao Wyn.

Niko Kei's is a singer and songwriter. She's been nominated for multiple grimmies and in

addition to her own music she's a member of the band the new pornographers. And when Rishi Kei

asked me to guest host an episode, Niko Kei's was who I was most excited to interview.

I'll be touring Sola with her this fall and I've been a fan of hers for years. In June 2018 she put

out her seventh album, Hell On, which she also co-produced. I interviewed her while she was here in

town in Berkeley. In this episode, Niko Kei's breaks down the song Last Line of Albion. Albion's one

of the oldest names for the island of Great Britain and is while she was in England that the song

first began. My name is Niko Kei's. I remember being in England on tour and you know I'm always

looking for history everywhere I am and I you know there's lions on everything in England and

it's a pretty popular crest and I just remember thinking how sad it was that all the lions

of England were extinct. Anything really beautiful that's used as a national symbol is often

something that has been destroyed kind of the signature move of colonialism. I was sitting in a coffee

shop in Shortage, Superjet lagged and just writing some things down and I think I was just thinking

what would it feel like to be the last line of Albion and that just made me so sad and I just

...