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.

The National Formed in 1999, they released six albums and have been nominated for a Grammy.

Their music has been everywhere from Game of Thrones to Bob Spurgers to Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

In 2013, they released their six-thousand album, Trouble Will Find Me, which debuted at number three on the Billboard charts.

The band is made up of singer Matt Berninger, along with two sets of brothers, guitarists Bryce and Aaron Desner, who are twins, and Brian and Scott Devendorf, who play drums and bass respectively.

In this episode, Matt Berninger and Aaron Desner break down Sea of Love, a song that they co-wrote.

He'll hear out went from Aaron's original guitar demo to a densely layered recording with contributions from their bandmates and others.

I heard you run, they sang, love is a virtue, don't bend, I see people all alone.

My name is Aaron Desner, and I play guitar and piano and other instruments and write a lot of the music.

And I am Matt, and I don't write any of the music. I write the lyrics and the vocal melodies and that kind of stuff.

This song, just started with a demo that was kind of like a rough, loud guitar.

It kind of sounds like Nirvana playing crazy horse or something.

I'm sketching a song, humming along to it, but mainly with Matt in mind, and then I kind of leave it open-ended so that he has room to carve.

Aaron and his brother Bryce will send me in the process of making a record, 50 or 60 little bits of ideas.

And some of them are developed and they have lots of different parts. Some of them are just really simple and rudimentary.

And I just work on the ones that I connect with in some way, and I will just sing along to it and try all kinds of different approaches and use it with melody.

I just look for melody and I'm singing nonsense. The words start to come after I figured out a melody mostly.

And if it's a good melody, words will just land on it and stick there.

Oh, you say you love me, Joe. How am I supposed to know?

It wasn't like I had a story about a character named Joe and all this kind of stuff that I wanted to tell.

It was mumbling melodies without any discernible words, probably for a while, until something stuck to it.

I hear it, Joe. Sorry I hurt you, but they say love is a virtue, don't they?

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