Simulation Swarm

”Simulation Swarm” is the seventh single released by Big Thief for their studio album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You. The track follows the previous Dragon singles “No Reason,” “Spud Infinity,” “Time Escaping,” “Change,” “Little Things,” “Sparrow,” and, “Certainty.”

Adrianne provided insight into the song’s inspiration for Rolling Stone:

”Some of her misgivings about modern life come through on the new song “Simulation Swarm,” which Lenker says was inspired by a series of intense experiences, any one of which another songwriter might have mined a full album out of: Her four-day hospitalization in Brooklyn in May 2020, when, she says, her body broke down after seven years of touring; the breakup that inspired her arresting 2020 solo album, songs; her early childhood, which was spent in a Midwestern separatist community that she has described as a “religious cult”; and her continued thinking about her biological brother Andrew, whom Lenker says she has never met (and whom she’s sung about before, on songs like 2017’s “Mythological Beauty”).”

“Simulation Swarm” debuted in a March 2020 Instagram post of Adrianne performing in the cabin where she recorded songs and instrumentals. The full band version debuted on the Fall 2021 tour.