Songfacts®:

• "99 BPM" is Kurt Vile's affectionate tribute to his late friend and longtime Violators bandmate, multi-instrumentalist Rob Laakso.
• The song was sparked when Vile picked up a battered acoustic guitar and thought back to a session where he and Laakso cut the basic tracks for "KV Crimes," off Vile's 2013 album Wakin on a Pretty Daze. That memory triggered a chain of callbacks, including first meeting Laakso in 1998 and traveling to Dartmouth in the early 2000s to see Laakso's band The Wicked Farleys while visiting his future wife, Suzanne.
  
  Over a slowed-down riff from that acoustic, Vile began singing, "That was my favorite band," referring to the Wicked Farleys.
  
  "I guess I was just thinking about Rob, in that moment," Vile told Uncut magazine. "Which is good, because most people that are important in my life, the people who have passed, I feel like they get a song, eventually."
  
  In that sense, "99 BPM" is a posthumous tribute, but its tone is appreciative and alive rather than purely mournful.
• The lyric about Laakso joining Vile's band "on the bass" brings the story forward. Laakso had contributed to Vile's God Is Saying This to You... (2009) and Smoke Ring for My Halo (2011) before officially joining the Violators full-time in 2011 after founding member Adam Granduciel departed. Laakso became a core pillar of Vile's signature sound, performing on four consecutive studio albums: Wakin on a Pretty Daze (2013), B'lieve I'm Goin Down... (2015), Bottle It In (2018), and Watch My Moves (2022). Illness prevented Laakso from touring for Watch My Moves, and he passed away from cholangiocarcinoma (bile-duct cancer) in May 2023, aged 44.
• Vile recorded "99 BPM" for his 10th album, Philadelphia's Been Good to Me, tracking much of it in his home studio, OKV Central, in Mount Airy, Philadelphia. "This is my 'bringing it all back home to Philly' record," said Vile. "I'm treating it like my last record. I put everything into it. It's my best vocal record. It's my best electric guitar record. It's my most organic record, made in the comfort of my own zone."
• Beyond its literal meaning, describing the song's mid-tempo, relaxed pulse, the title highlights Vile's fascination with gear and the mechanics of songwriting. Much like the companion tracks "Zoom 97" and "99th Song," "99 BPM" celebrates the sheer tactile pleasure of instruments, analog equipment, hypnotic repetition, and finding a groove.