Songfacts®:

• La Roux are red haired singer Elly Jackson and her studio partner Ben Langmaid, who is a veteran of the 1990s dance scene. Jackson explained to Dummymag.com that La Roux "means 'red haired one' in French." She added: "We didn't have a name for ages. I was racking brains about it. I knew that when the right one came along it would feel right. I wanted it to be something to do with my red hair and the fact that I'm a bit French. I also wanted it to match up to other band names in the same vein from the '80s. Finally, I wanted it to have a slightly enigmatic quality. I wanted people to be like, What does that mean? I came up with it after I went to see the guy who was designing graphics for our MySpace site. He'd just found a baby name book in the bin. I opened it and the first word that popped out was 'La Roux'. I didn't know what it meant. I just liked the way it looked. Then I looked up what it meant and I was like, Tah-dah!"
• Jackson explained this '80s-derived song to Steve Harris of XFM radio: "It's about telling someone how you feel regardless of what you get back, and not waiting to find out if they want you or not." She added that when she wrote this, "I was quite in to someone in quite a deep and intense way and I went overseas (Paris) and told them I like them. It all fired back in my face but that's not the point you do it for yourself."
• Jackson's father, Kit, is a jobbing actor who appeared on the cover of Chas & Dave's "Rabbit" single. Her mother is Trudie Goodwin, who played Sergeant June Ackland on ITV's The Bill.
• This song proved to be a huge hit for the electro-pop duo, peaking at #2 in the UK. Jackson told the BBC Newsbeat program that the song 's success was a total surprise. She said: "None of us expected it to do that at all. Me and Ben have had faith in it and we always thought it had potential to go far but we were never sure if other people were going to feel the same or if other people were going to like it. We know it has a Marmite effect vocally. Some people don't like it or they find it a bit annoying which is totally fine. We knew that when we wrote it that it was going to be a love/hate thing. It's just always really lovely when music speaks for itself like that."
• The Kinga Burza directed music video features Jackson singing the song while driving a Toyota MR2 clad in a plastic outfit. Towards the end of the clip she comes across a more angelic version of herself standing in the middle of the road in front of a flood of white light. "That light that's behind me is genuinely that bright," Jackson told MTV News. "And the back of the jacket started melting. It was that hot, and I nearly burnt my back!"
  
  She added: "You know that episode of Friends where Ross has to put talcum powder on his legs when he's got those leather trousers on? I had to do that, like, every tea break."
• La Roux Dubstep musician Skream's "Let's Get Ravey" re-mix was chosen by BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe as his record of the year for 2009.
• Jackson explained the song title in an article written for The Ivor Novello Essays published at Ivors Academy: "I wrote the verse and chorus on my guitar at home. There was an article on the floor with the headline 'In for the Kill.' I was writing about going to Paris and telling someone that I loved them, so that was just so appropriate."
• A second video was shot for the American market. It was set in New York City's legendary Hotel Chelsea, past home to many musicians.