Songfacts®:

• Pixies lead singer Black Francis wrote "Caribou" for the group's debut album, though he confessed to NME he has "absolutely no memory of writing that song."
  
  But that doesn't mean he dislikes it; in fact, it's one of his favorites. He likes playing it so much that even when it's not on a setlist, he'll swap out a different song so he can sneak it in.
• Black Francis told NME the abstraction of this song is related to reincarnation, "maybe even the singer of the song is reincarnated as a caribou."
• Black Francis and drummer David Lovering call this one of the group's defining songs with its juxtaposing elements like soft, sweet singing and screaming. "It kind of runs the whole gamut of things that we do with music," Francis explained.
• Lovering says he borrowed a friend's drum set when the band recorded this at Fort Apache Studios in Roxbury, Massachusetts.