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 Rishi Kesh Hirway.

This week, I wanted to revisit one of my favorite episodes of Song Exploder, its perfume genius telling the story of making a song slip away.

This episode originally came out in May 2017, and since then,

the album that this song is from went on to be nominated for a Grammy. And next week, on March 16th,

perfume genius is going to be playing at the Song Exploder stage at South by Southwest. I'm really,

really excited to be putting on a showcase at the festival. And in addition to

Perfume Genius, the other artists that are playing that night are Kimbra, Sarah Kinsley, Fly Anakin, and

Jenny Owen Youngs. They're all going to be playing live, and I'm going to talk to them a little bit

about their songs. For more information about the show, go to songexploader.net slash

SXSW. That songexploader.net slash sXW.

That's songexploader.net slash sXSW.

And the link is also in this episode's description.

Okay, here's the Perfume Genius episode.

Mike Hadrius has been making music under the name Perfume Genius since 2008.

In May 2017, he put out his fourth album, No Shape, to widespread critical acclaim.

In this episode, Mike breaks down the song, Slip Away.

I also spoke with producer Blake Mills, who also plays on the track, and recording engineer Sean Everett, about the unusual way the song was recorded.

It's Mike from Perfume Genius.

Before I wrote, Slip Away, I was writing very different songs for about a month.

I was writing really dark, wordless chanting over drones,

and they were very kind of formless and creepy.

...