Songfacts®:

• This was released as the first single from The National's sixth studio album, Trouble Will Find Me. The song marries an unusual 7/4 time signature to a dancey groove.
• Frontman Matt Berninger revealed to NME that Trouble Will Find Me was informed by a preoccupation with aging and death. "It's a record about getting older, and all the fascinations and headaches that go with that," he said. "But it's not grim, honestly! It's actually pretty fun. Bands spend a lot of time in vans. You go to sleep knowing you're on a coach that has to get from France to Germany in 10 hours and you wonder, 'What if I never wake up? I have a daughter. What'll happen to her if something happens to me?'"
• This is one of several songs on Trouble Will Find Me where the band worked with indie-folk singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens. Drummer Bryan Devendorf told the Gothamist: "There are some drum machines provided by Sufjan Stevens - he did some other things too, but he had this drum machine and he did some cool little parts on that."
  
  He continued: "It's [drum machine] on a bunch [of songs], it's definitely on 'Demons', there's some subtle stuff on 'Pink Rabbits', and definitely on 'I Need My Girl'. But it's not like Daft Punk or anything."
• Berniger described this synth-driven tune to Rolling Stone as, "a fun song about embracing your dark side."
• The Trouble Will Find Me album cover is a scene from Korean artist Bohyun Yoon's 2003 art installation Fragmentation. He told NME: "Many of the songs explore the ideas of 'passage.' I am curious about human perception developing in parallel with the progression of the technological world."