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 her way.

Casey Dinell is a producer, singer and songwriter who goes by the name White Hinterland. In this episode she'll break down her song Ring the Bell.

To make it she had to break out of her comfort zone of working alone and reach out to other people. She got a little unexpected help from Beyoncé.

Here's the exploded view of the song Ring the Bell.

I'm getting much better what to solve.

My name is Casey Dinell and I am the singer writer, I guess, for White Hinterland.

Day to day it's a solo project. In 2010 I was touring and the opening melody that chords set are just like...

Just popped in my head and then I ran to the practice base and we like banged out a little demo.

The way that my songs tend to work is that I create like a big mound of clay.

I work backwards so rather than starting from nothing I like to have a lot of things to choose from and then just viciously cut away at it until I feel like I'm getting at the heart of whatever it is that I'm trying to experience or feel.

Once I kind of commit words to a melody it's really hard for me to go back from that because it's almost like the way that I write lyrics is like they have the melody in them.

I never shoehorn words into the melody I find that the words kind of carry their own intonation and then I have to find a way into it.

And so for a song like Ring the Bell I think the words just ring the bell like that just carried the melody immediately and I didn't have to do much beyond that.

I don't even know where it came from I think I liked the simplicity of it like it's both a demand but also a request.

It's not just one thing and I also like that it has like a positive need to it like I need you to tell me what you want or I need you to tell me how you feel.

There's some initiative in it that at the time I was going through a lot of stuff in my life where I was like I just want people to say what they mean and what they need from me and then I can give you that.

I didn't want it to be too wordy because there's a lot of other things that I wanted to accomplish texturally with the other instruments.

In the winter of 2012 I was really stuck I'd been playing around with all these different demos of Ring the Bell.

I know what to do and I was driving around in my car listening to Beyonce and there's a part on the end of time where all these horns come in

and it's just like the sky opening up.

And I was like that's what these songs need that's what I want I want it to sound like you know when joy escapes.

And then I was looking at the credits and a close name was in the Beyonce credits and he and I went to New England Conservatory together and I dropped everything I was doing and I was like oh my god like I know him and I hadn't spoken to him in probably eight years or something.

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