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.

Riders' block is something I experience with every record in one way, shape, or form.

I have the feeling of the universe allotted a certain number of songs and I hit my quota.

Now I'm never going to write another good song again.

But usually the darkest moments of Riders' block, right?

When it really gets hard and you're really kind of borderline panicking over it,

that's usually when you push through in my experience.

It's like, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, kept doing the next thing,

and before I knew it, I wrote fire and it really felt like, okay, I got this.

It's going to be okay.

I'm Katie Crutchfield from Wax-Achi.

Katie Crutchfield is a singer and songwriter from Birmingham, Alabama.

She's been making music under the name Wax-Achi since 2010.

Her fifth album, St. Cloud, came out this past March.

Pitchfork named it Best New Music, and the Guardian called it the best album of the year

so far.

In this episode, Katie breaks down how she made the song fire.

As I was preparing to write this song, I was traveling.

I had been spending a lot of time here in Kansas, which is where I live.

It was winter and I was sort of hammering away at writing the record.

...