Songfacts®:

• Misophonia is a condition that makes everyday life a minefield of auditory irritation. It's characterized by an extreme sensitivity to specific sounds - chewing, tapping, or heavy breathing, for instance - that can send sufferers into fits of emotional and physiological distress. Imagine being unable to sit next to someone eating potato chips without wanting to jump out of a window, and you have the general idea.
  
  Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago knows this torment all too well. He wrote the lyrics for "Hypnotised," a track from the Pixies' ninth album, The Night The Zombies Came, about the condition.
  
  "It's about misophonia, this damn thing I have where I can't stand the sound of chewing," he told Mojo magazine about the song.
  
  He added that the band's frontman-songwriter Black Francis likes to hear his thoughts. "You know, I do have weird thoughts," he said.
• Santiago set out to write about his condition head-on but soon discovered there are only so many ways to say it.
  
  "I hate the sound of crunching" sound poetic. "I tried to write about another subject," he lamented to NME. "I tried to write about it so many times and it just wasn't working because it was very specific. I don't like the sound of crunching at all. I have it and I know other people that have it. But it was just too specific. So, so I just started being more mysterious. It's psychedelic. It's a psychedelic experience."
• To elevate the song's hypnotic vibe, Santiago took inspiration from the sestina, a poetic structure dating back to the 12th century. A complex verse form from Provence, the sestina involves repeating words in a spiraling, almost incantatory pattern.
• The Night The Zombies Came is the first Pixies album to feature bassist Emma Richardson. Formerly of the English group Band of Skulls, Richardson's approach to bass playing for the group involved a significant change in her technique. She had to switch from playing with her fingers to using a pick, which she had rarely done before joining the band. That's because original Pixie Kim Deal played with a pick, so their famous songs have that sound.
• Richardson's addition also made her the first British member of the Pixies, lending the album a faintly transatlantic flavor. It's interesting that the Pixies chose to title the song using British English spelling (Hypnotised") rather than American English ("Hypnotized").
• For those who find Santiago's misophonia-themed musings intriguing, it's worth noting that Jack White tackled a similar subject on his 2018 Boarding House Reach track "Hypermisophoniac." In the song he intentionally incorporates annoying sounds to reflect the experience of misophonia.
• Pixies recorded The Night the Zombies Came in three weeks in October 2023 with producer Tom Dalgerty, who's worked with the group since their 2016 Head Carrier album. They laid it down at Guilford Sound in Vermont, a facility billed as "New England's premier eco-friendly recording studio and music retreat space."
  
  "The power is really, really clean over there, you can hear it," Joey Santiago told Mojo magazine.