Songfacts®:

• This trip inside the mind of a serial killer finds singer Joe Newman examining the dark side of the human condition. A harrowing experience Newman suffered in his teens when a friend's sister got murdered served as inspiration. "It was really a horrible thing to go through as a group of friends," he told The Guardian, "but I think I've always been kind of drawn to that in some kind of weird, traumatic way."
• The subject matter of a serial killer who murdered 15 young boys is distressing, but because Newman's father was a probation officer, the vocalist is comfortable talking about it. "He worked for the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which is connecting all areas of the justice sector and social care and psychiatry into understanding sex offenders so that they can be treated," Newman told Apple Music. "I was always fascinated by his commitment to keeping people safe by re-evaluating how to look after people who are afflicted with these issues."
• Alt-J recorded "Losing My Mind" for their fourth album, The Dream. The record's huge body count comes from Newman's obsession with true crime podcast My Favourite Murder. "I find it fascinating how detached we are from that side of the human condition," he explained to The Independent. "You go to Epping Forest and there are bodies buried, and you just walk past it. You turn on the news and something awful has happened but you're so disconnected from it because there are divides between you and what you're watching."
• Mark Newman, Joe's father, contributed the "look over your shoulder" line spoken by the boy's dad in the first verse.
• There are two lines sung in German in the second verse:
  
  Montag (Monday")
  Oh, es war einfach (It was easy")