Songfacts®:

• Trent Reznor announced in February 2013 that he was re-forming Nine Inch Nails to tour. The previous few years he'd been concentrating on film scoring and his other band How To Destroy Angels. Four months later the band revealed that they'd been doing a whole lot more than just gigging when they announced their eighth studio album, Hesitation Marks. "I've been less than honest about what I've really been up to lately," said Reznor. "For the last year I've been secretly working non-stop with Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder on a new, full-length Nine Inch Nails record, which I am happy to say is finished." This bouncy, electric track was released as the first single from the project.
• The song, Nine Inch Nail's first single since 2008's "Discipline" finds Reznor singing "I said goodbye. But I had to try." The lyrics are presumably a reference to his activities during the band's hiatus.
• The album title is a reference to small wounds inflicted during self-harm.
• The song's music video was directed by David Lynch and released on June 28, 2013, with an epileptic seizure warning. Nine Inch Nails and the director have crossed paths before. In 1997, Reznor produced the soundtrack to the David Lynch film Lost Highway and the release spawned the band's single "The Perfect Drug." "I'm a huge David Lynch fan – we used to hold up Nine Inch Nails shows just so we could watch the latest Twin Peaks," Reznor told Rolling Stone in 1997.