“I have a weird affinity for pests. Oddly relatable. They don’t mean to harm anyone, but they spread disease and leave most of us figuring they should probably die. During the winter of the pandemic, I walked into my wrecked kitchen to find a mouse trying to drag a big parmesan rind into a gap behind the oven, all bug-eyed and bird-footed. He ran away when he saw me, so I broke the cheese into smaller pieces, figuring it was cold out and he could use a hand. New friend.

But I learned his particular species carry some particularly deadly diseases, so despite desperately wanting not to, I gave in and accepted some poison traps from my landlord. They worked, and then I spent a couple days bleaching everything and losing my marbles.

It’s sick. You make the mouse think he’s found an enormous supply of food in his warm new shelter. He eats it, full of hope and gratitude, then it’s curtains. I knew the “humane” traps would have just let the winter air kill him and do so slower, but I pulled an awful little trick on my friend. In hindsight maybe I also found falling for that trick oddly relatable.

I wrote this song as a sort of tribute. I’m embarrassingly proud of the fact that I did all the orchestration for it – it’s my first time arranging such a large band. I hope the song honors my friend well. Sorry, mouse.” – Will Wood on American Pancake

Will Wood also comments on the music video for the song itself as well on Behind The Curtains Media:

“I’m really lucky to have had the opportunity to work with Ivan Owen of Beyond the Bark on this video. Ivan builds laser-cut wooden mechanics and then uses stop motion animation to show them operating in some really interesting ways. The precisely-engineered machinery is juxtaposed with itself by virtue of it all being made of wood, which I think speaks to some of the feelings I’m trying to express in this song in a sort of abstract way. It takes place in a world that’s mechanical but natural. There’s something to the story Ivan and I tried to tell with the video that is about accepting the inherent unfairness and injustice of reality. Nature is just a machine doing what it’s designed to be able to do. We’re just sort of cogs in it. It’s kind of a sigh, I suppose. At how you’re born, you struggle, and then you randomly die. So when the universe plays a cruel joke on us, no matter how dark and screwball it is, sometimes all we can do is throw our hands up and say “nature, I guess.”'

• French Translation