Songfacts®:

• This song is about the fishing boats of the Maldives (the dhoni). "The Maldives are scheduled to disappear this century, under the rising sea," Black Francis told Mojo. "The character who's singing is returning to see it before it disappears – returning from outer space."
  
  The dhoni is one of the oldest known sea vessels in the Maldives. Built domestically, many of these traditional sailing vessels were originally built using coconut palm timber, although imported wood from Southeast Asia is now increasingly used. Each dhoni can carry about eight to twelve people.
• The song's music video was conceived and directed by Lital Mizel and Adi Frimmerman. The pair's YouTube video of themselves lip-syncing and dancing to the Dollittle track "Hey" went viral in 2005.
  
  Mizel and Adi Frimmerman met Pixies backstage after their concert in Israel and offered to make this visual. Frimmerman explained: "We got the idea to make a clip about our nostalgic longing for the things that had been replaced and the childhood memories that were attached to them."
  
  She added: "We also felt connected to the 'Generation-Y' characterization of those '80s-'90s lost kids who hold on to their memories of the past in a fast-changing, anxiety-filled world."