Singled Out: Magdalena Bay's Killshot

K. Wiggins | 12-12-2019

Electro-pop duo Magdalena Bay recently released their new single "Killshot" and to celebrate we asked Mica Tenenbaum to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

Killshot's a song that we started working on over a year back and it'll actually be one of our last releases that was created during our time as a long-distance band. Not long before we both moved to LA together, and were still living in different cities, Matt sent me, Mica, the instrumental beat over text. I loved it right away - this slinky, sexy and vaguely 2000's type of beat (Matt's instrumental was inspired by Pharrell). I came up with a chorus melody and sent the idea to Matt. He liked it but wasn't super convinced about the song in general...The idea sat there for the longest time until about six months ago when we pulled the project back up and realized that it was actually good!

For this song, the lyrics were born out of the mood that the melody and instrumental set up. We're huge Britney and Gwen fans and had been listening to them a ton, and the chromatic, sort of spooky vibe had me thinking this just had to be a song about deadly desire. I've written a few songs now about the all-consuming nature of infatuation - I guess I had some obsessive tendencies through my preteen and teen years that I like to tap into for song lyrics, haha. Just like our 2000's references, we wanted the lyrics to be melodramatic and tongue in cheek. "Sin and tonic"... "If I wanna stay alive, you should never cross my mind"... these lyrics made us laugh while writing them but it's so true that you feel like your heart may burst and you just may die while waiting for the object of your desire to text you back.

The recording for the song was done in our living room, like with all our releases! The video was also DIY, as most of our vids are. I actually haven't seen Blair Witch Project (hate horror movies) but have seen clips and wanted that shaky cam in the dark outdoors type of energy for this. We went out a few nights in a row to film the footage for the video - tough cause we're sleepy people-- and put it together, threw in some data mosh glitches, and called it a music vid! Haha, this one was pretty bare bones and meant to communicate a spooky visual vibe for the song. So I tried to sell it with my performance and edit in a way that suited the music.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself right here!