Songfacts®:

• This is the one new recording from A Perfect Circle's greatest hits compilation, Three Sixty. It was the band's first fresh song to appear in nearly a decade. The five-minute cut was written during the band's live re-emergences in the early 2010s and was first debuted as far back as June 2011, when the band played it live at their North American Summer tour. Frontman Maynard James Keenan told Artist Direct the song evolved in its live setting. "That's always going to happen when you have a song that you've rehearsed in a square room," he said. "When you get on stage, you feel a push and pull. You need to nudge this part a little harder and you need to get a little quieter on this part. All of those things evolve as you tour, I'd have to say with every song, that's the case. I think they're going to slowly evolve as you do them. For the most part, that song has remained fairly pure from its inception. Because of the experience we've had in the past on the road, I feel like we can kind of predict where that might go."
• Guitarist Billy Howerdel told Billboard magazine that laying down this song in the studio proved to be a challenge, especially since the band hadn't recorded any new material since 2004's eMOTIVe. "I kind of underestimated what it would take to do it because we had played it live so many times,"Howerdel said. "The song was pretty realized, and I knew what it was gonna be. But just like anything else in the studio, just because you know the notes doesn't mean you know how the production's gonna go down. It took awhile to craft it into a proper studio recording that you were gonna be proud enough to release. Once I was in the middle of it, it did feel like familiar ground again to do that, but it definitely takes a little while to get back on the horse."
• The song can also be found on the "Stone and Echo" volume of the band's 2013 limited edition live box set, recorded during an Aug. 11, 2011 show at Red Rocks Amphitheater near Denver.
• The music originated from Howerdel playing around with his three-year old. The guitarist recalled to Rock Revolt Magazine: "He was playing piano, banging around on the keyboard, and I was just trying to play a melody to help have him follow along with, (use one finger instead of pounding with your fist), and the melody of 'By And Down' just came out of that. I hit record on my phone, recorded the beginnings of that, the chord structure, kicked my three-year old out of the room, probably put him in front of the Wiggles or something like that on TV, and got to work on the song."