“Blood For Poppies” by Garbage

Garbage came back in March 2012 with "Blood for Poppies", the lead single from their fifth album Not Your Kind of People, put out through Stunvolume and picked to go first because the band felt it summed up who they are. It began elsewhere: the seed came from sessions for a solo record Shirley Manson later abandoned, a dub-flavored jam that got pared back to its groove and bassline while she worked out how to sing over it.

Manson pushed for the strobing, glitchy vocal treatments that make her voice stutter in and out. Duke Erikson threaded clean, vibrato-laden lead lines through the verses, and Steve Marker added the monster riff late in the game, tracking the recurring distorted lick through an amp mod into his laptop; keyboards fed through wah-wahs supply the synth sounds. Justin Meldal-Johnsen plays bass, and Billy Bush mixed it with Butch Vig.

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