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It can be hard to be in a band, or really, in any kind of group where there\u2019s creative collaboration, and you\u2019re supposed to act like it's a democracy. Because what do you do with an idea that you love, if nobody else believes in it? That question is a big part of this episode with Local Natives.

Local Natives is a band from Southern California. Their first album came out in 2009, but the three vocalists and songwriters in the band, Taylor Rice, Kelcey Ayer, and Ryan Hahn \u2013 they\u2019ve been playing together since they were in high school. The lineup also includes Matthew Frazier on drums and Nik Ewing on bass. They\u2019ve put out five albums, including their most recent, Time Will Wait For No One, which came out in July 2023.

But for this episode, I talked to Taylor, Kelcey, and Ryan about an older song of theirs: \u201cDark Days,\u201d which came out in 2016. It\u2019s their biggest song to date; it has over 100 million streams, and it's been certified gold.\xa0 It\u2019s a duet with Swedish singer Nina Persson, from The Cardigans. In\xa0 2020, they put out a new version of the song, featuring Amelia Meath from the band Sylvan Esso.

I talked to the guys here in the studio, and to Amelia Meath remotely. And together, they told me the seven-year story of how \u201cDark Days,\u201d was first made and then eventually remade.

For more, visit songexploder.net/local-natives.