Songfacts®:

• This is a track from Kiss Each Other Clean, the fourth album released by American singer-songwriter Samuel Beam, who records under the name of Iron & Wine. Beam told Billboard magazine that he penned the tune a decade before some of the other tracks on the record. "I don't really sit down to write a record," he explained. "I'm writing all the time, so when it seems time to put a record out, you look in your bag and see what songs you have that might work together well."
• Some of the tunes made it onto Kiss Each Other Clean because of a recurring theme of water and rivers in them. "It comes down to that, sometimes," Beam told Billboard magazine with a laugh. "I realized a bunch of songs used the river in different ways. It's a classic metaphor for life, sometimes as a force of destruction, sometimes it's redemption or rejuvenation. It's fun to have the same image crop up in different songs and be presented in totally different lights."