“Great Salt Lake” by Band of Horses

"The Great Salt Lake" was the second single off Everything All the Time, Band of Horses' 2006 debut on Sub Pop, and it went out in the US that August. The twist is in the title: the lake it's really about is Lake Murray, a reservoir down in South Carolina, where Ben Bridwell comes from, and the song mixes that home-state imagery with stories the band had heard about some screwups they knew in Salt Lake City.

It started life as one of six lo-fi demos on the band's self-titled EP, and the buzz around that record got a fellow South Carolinian, Iron and Wine's Sam Beam, to hand them an opening slot on his tour. The single never charted, yet it's still one of their best-known songs and the third-most-played in their live sets. The video puts Bridwell, Creighton Barrett and Rob Hampton on a softball field.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.