Songfacts®:

• The title track of Alabama Shakes' second album, this is the opening track on the record. Vocalist Brittany Howard explained to Consequence of Sound why they named the disc after this tune. "I had a demo that was called 'Sound & Color' and brought it to the studio," she said. "Everybody liked it, so we started working, and it got to a point where we realised this is a really great opening song."
  
  "We just thought that this record said that verse - there's so many different landscapes, and that was the one thing I was really proud of," Howard added. "I like the fact that it's not one congruent thing because I get bored really easy, so it's nice to jump from one thing to the next."
• The song's music video follows the story of a lonesome astronaut on a space station. The clip was directed by James Frost, and based on a concept by Brittany Howard. Frost's other credits include the visuals for OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass" and Radiohead's "House of Cards."
• New York based artist and designer Mario Hugo provided direction, design, and illustration for the album. His artwork has also been used by the likes of Lorde, Rihanna and fashion designers Phillip Lim and Cushnie et Ochs.
• The song soundtracked the final scene of the first season of the American drama–thriller television series Mr. Robot. The show was transmitted on September 2, 2015.
• The song features prominently in the Apple 'A Great Big Universe' iPad Pro commercial, which debuted in early November 2015.
• Most of the Sound & Color tracks were created in the studio rather than written beforehand. Producer Blake Mills told Uncut magazine: "Brittany would write things, demo them on GarageBand, and then they'd work on them as a band in Brittany's basement. So in the studio we figured out what happens when we experimented with sounds and parts, and it turned into one of those records where you're writing as you're going and using the inspiration of what happened on one song to start the next one. You would never design a record that way, but it's the kind of thing that happened when you just allow space for something to take place."