Songfacts®:

• This is the lead single from the soundtrack for the Twilight sequel New Moon.
• Death Cab For Cutie bassist Nick Harmer said in a statement: "We are very excited to be a part of this amazing series of novels set in our own backyard. It just seemed a perfect synergy that a band from the Northwest would create a song for a series of novels set in the Northwest." He added that the band wrote this song, "to reflect the celestial themes and motifs that run throughout the Twilight series and we wanted to capture that desperate feeling of endings and beginnings that so strongly affect the main characters. This song marks the first attempt that Death Cab for Cutie has ever made at contributing new, unreleased material for a film and we are proud to be a part of the 'Twilight' legacy."
• Harmer told MTV News that this song is one the band would've been endlessly proud of even if it didn't get picked to be the lead single from the New Moon soundtrack. He explained: "We wanted to record a song that we loved and we would use on an album or anywhere and submit it to this process, and if they passed on it - if they were like, 'Hey, you know what? This isn't quite right for us, thanks a lot for trying' - we'd still have a song out that we'd be proud of, that we could put somewhere else. For us, it was a no-lose situation. What was most important for us was to get the material right first... and it tied into these films, especially New Moon, because if you strip away all the vampirism and the werewolves and the Northwest and everything, basically, the 'Twilight' series is just a big romance novel. It's a big story about love, and that's a major theme for us."
• Frontman Ben Gibbard told MTV News that though he has never read a book in the "Twilight" series, when penning this song he drew from a different inspiration: his childhood memories of Pacific Northwest towns like Forks and Port Angeles, which feature prominently in the "Twilight" series. He explained: "For me, I grew up on the west side of Puget Sound, and I spent a lot of my youth traveling around those areas - Port Angeles and Forks and down around the peninsula - and for me, who grew up in that area, it's kind of nice to see this kind of new tourism boom. It's basically a logging town. There's never been anything going on there, unless you were logging or protesting logging - those are the two things to do in Forks. But it's a really beautiful part of the country, and it's great to see such a beautiful light shone on it through these films."
• Gibbard told MTV News that the song is 'based on tones' of the 'Twilight' series. He explained: "The song at its core is just about meeting another halfway, because life is very short, because there's only a brief period of time to really connect with people, and that it's important to recognize that. I haven't read all of the 'Twilight' books, but I know a bit about them, and I think the song is really based on tones of the series. Like, I think it would've been really easy to write a song that was like a book report, and I've always kind of disliked book report songs, even though I'm guilty of a couple myself over the years. I just wanted something that kind of tonally matched the story and the scenes within the film, so they could kind of be put alongside but not be telling a narrative you're watching on the screen."
• DCFC guitarist Chris Walla explained to MTV News the concept behind the song's promo, which draws heavily on the ideas of day and night and light and shadow. "The idea behind the video is that this house that we're in, this crazy ski lodge of a building here, it's going to get cut together with scenes from the film, sort of like it's a place that might be in Forks, sort of a place that might be next door to Bella's house or something," said Walla. "All the light stuff that's happening through the windows, it's the 'day-turning-into-night-turning-into-day thing,' the idea is that it's supposed to look like a time-lapse thing, only it's not actually a time-lapse thing, and it's quite a trick."
  The music video was filmed in a mansion on the outskirts of Toronto in Canada. It was directed by Walter Robot, the same duo behind the clip for "Grapevine Fires."