Songfacts®:

• The track features guest vocals from "River" singer Bishop Briggs. "Bishop was so confident and her voice is perfection; the voice of a woman twice her age, so raw and sophisticated," frontman Nathan Willett said. "I sorta laid in the cut and watched her explode."
• Asked by Billboard magazine how the band got involved with Bishop Briggs, Willett replied: "We've never done a feature or had somebody else sing on something - I've always really wanted to do exactly what we ended up doing. Something that feels really organic, finding another artist who can merge those things so well. And the sound of her voice is so incredible in that song."
• Willett shared during a LA Divine release show at Los Angeles' iHeartRadio Theater that the collaboration with Bishop Briggs came about after he heard one of her songs on the radio. He decided to direct message her on Twitter, unsure whether or not it would yield a song. "I love a powerful woman's voice," the Cold War Kids frontman said.
• Nathan Willett explained in a Genius attribution how this was inspired by the eternal question of how much you should disclose about old relationships after hooking up with a new love interest:
  
  I told you the truth about the old me
  And now you use confession as the proof
  
  He said: "With every new relationship, you either talk about previous relationship stuff (warts and all), or you just pretend like they never existed. Both are kinda terrible. When you go the full disclosure route it's probably sincere, maybe you're even praised for your vulnerability. However, you know it's probably gonna be used against you later, in a fight, in the worst way."
• The Tota-produced darkly comedic video shows an unhappy relationship where the couple go to increasingly ridiculous lengths to kill each other as Bishop Briggs and Nathan Willet look on.
  
  "'So Tied Up' is about the tension and struggle of relationships," Willett said. "With this video, we wanted to show the sweetness on the surface and the violence that bubbles underneath as a metaphor for all of our love lives."