Songfacts®:

• This semi-detached rumination on social angst and death finds the song's narrator engaging in some self-indulgent despair. Frontman Matt Berniger croons:
  
  "I retired to the briars by the pool it gets so loud
  If I die this instant
  Taken from a distance
  They will probably list it down among other things around town."
  
  The song is one of several on Trouble Will Find Me where Berniger explores mortality in a playful way. Asked by The Independent what he has learned about death, the vocalist replied: "I'm a secular humanist. I believe that when our light goes off we're dust. I think our heaven and hell will come from how we leave the world and how we treat others – that was something that came into stark reality for me when I had a kid."
  "Maybe if I at least try to make my little girl happy," he continued, "I'll get to leave some heaven around and that will be my afterlife. I don't find that depressing – I actually find it very soothing and motivating."
• The song features backing vocals from The National's fellow New Yorker, St. Vincent.