When I was growing up, there were these news stories that kept popping up in my life about children who would get swept out to sea, and the parents would dive in after them. I’d seen these news stories crop up again and again, and it made me think of this idea of the sea being this entity that needs a sacrifice—like, if it’s going to take your children, then you have to give yourself. It got me thinking about the power of water, like in Virginia Woolf, and that sense of really being overwhelmed by something. I also remembered this idea, I think from a childhood story, about a river that has to have someone drowned in it before you can cross it—like, if you see a river running smoothly, it’s because someone has drowned in it, and if it’s raging, it means that it’s still got bloodlust … It’s all very morbid. My dad always gets asked at parties, “What did you do to her?”

- Florence Welch