Neko Case

Deep Red Bells

“It’s based on the Green River killer,” she says. “When I was a kid in Tacoma, we were all scared all the time. I actually carried a knife to school with me. The ‘you’ in the song is one of his victims. They were all prostitutes, but we didn’t know that. They could have been anybody; they could have been us.”

When you know this, “hiding place” becomes pretty ominous, and “silver tongues” may allude to the way the killer — Gary Ridgway — used sweet talk and photographs of his son to lull his victims into trusting him.

This song's powerful lyric