Songfacts®:

• The "Holocene" song title comes from both a Portland bar and the current climactic era, which began some 12,000 years ago and follows on from the last major Ice Age. Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon explained to Mojo magazine: "It's partly named after the (geological) era, but it's also the name of a bar in Portland where I had a dark night of the soul."
• Vernon was born and brought up in Eau Claire and he continued to live in the area even after he got famous. The song has three verses about three different times if his life living in the Wisconsin town. He told Mojo: "The title is a metaphor for when you're not doing well. But it's also a song about redemption and realizing that you're worth something; that you're special and not special at the same time."
• "Holocene" was released as the second single from the Bon Iver album on September 5, 2011. It was backed by a cover of Peter Gabriel's "Come Talk To Me," which was originally released in April 2011 as a limited-edition 7-inch for Record Store Day.
• Bon Iver hired the Australian visual artist Nabil Elderkin for the song's music video. Elderkin has also worked with Kanye West, Frank Ocean and Common. He filmed the visual among Iceland's glacial landscapes, which features a young boy traveling through the rocky, picturesque landscapes. The clip was fittingly debuted on the National Geographic website.
• The roots of this song trace back to "Hazelton," a solo track recorded by Justin Vernon between 2005 and 2006. During that time, Vernon, still a member of his previous band DeYarmond Edison, independently released "Hazelton" and another song called "Liner" on a limited number of handmade CD-Rs. "Hazleton" later served as a starting point for "Holocene."