Songfacts®:

• "Kisses," a sonic dreamscape by British shoegaze pioneers Slowdive, opens with an enigmatic exchange:
  
  Tell me, "You're the best thing"
  I tell you, "That's what you need"
  
  The song then (slowly) dives into a world of evocative imagery, each phrase painted with hazy beauty: "Rolling on those good looks," co-vocalist Neil Halstead sighs, hinting at fleeting pleasures. "Maybe it's just enough," he questions, leaving a sense of yearning. Then Halstead transports the listener to "snowfields," imagined as a vast escape, "floating high above the trees."
  
  When we get to the chorus, Halsted and bandmate Rachel Goswell repeat the phrase, "Kisses, born desert sun" like a mantra, creating a hypnotic and sensual spell.
• Slowdive released "Kisses" as the lead single from Everything is Alive on June 20, 2023. The album arose from material that Halstead wrote with modular synthesizers in 2019 for a planned electronic solo record. He came to his bandmates with about 30 different ideas, some of which were more fully formed songs, and some, like "Kisses," mere snippets of ideas.
  
  "One day Neil casually said, 'I've got this song here,'" Goswell told Uncut magazine. "And we were like, whoa, that's a great tune!"
• "Kisses" went through several different life forms over two years. There was an electronic version that both Halsted and guitarist Christian Savill favored, but they eventually plumped for a guitar version.
  
  "I demoed this early in the process and it sat there while we worked on other stuff," Halsted told Uncut. "Eventually we recorded it but couldn't decide on a direction – there's a great Kraftwerky version – that we kept coming back to the demo, which was sort of complete but scared me because it felt too pop. That ended up being the way we went."
• Everything is Alive received critical acclaim and was commercially successful throughout Europe. It reached #6 in the UK, the band's first Top 10 album in their home country. It also peaked at #7 in Belgium, #9 in Germany, #4 in the Netherlands, and #10 in New Zealand.