Songfacts®:

• "Pistol" is a breakup song where singer Greg Gonzalez processes being dumped. He recalls the agreeable moments he spent with his former lover, but the memories of their time together haunt him. Gonzalez obsessively misses his ex and struggles to accept that he'll never kiss her again.
• The title comes from the song's opening lines:
  
  Give me the pistol
  Aim it high
  I'm out in the desert
  Shooting at the sky
  
  Gonzalez kills time following their split by firing shots into the desert sky.
• Greg Gonzalez wrote and produced "Pistol" himself. Cigarettes After Sex's first new song since their 2020 single "You're All I Want," it maintains their dreamy, soft sound. Rather than experimenting outside of their established musical style, Gonzalez said he "prefers to explore the same track even more in depth."
  
  The Cigarettes After Sex frontman added that he idealizes this project as one where the music "should stay consistent, and the people who like us should find what they loved about us."