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Matthew Dear And Tegan And Sara Address The 'Bad Ones'

By Lars Gotrich

Published August 29, 2017 at 9:03 AM EDT

"Matthew's music has always been my go-to for late night bus rides in headphones and I still geek out that we made this together!" Sara Quin says of her collaboration with Matthew Dear.

If the producer and DJ Matthew Dear soundtracked our comedown earlier this summer with the goth-pop jewel "Modafinil Blues," he now returns to make sense of the season's revelry.

After Dear's remix of Tegan And Sara's "I Was a Fool" and a joint Tears For Fears cover, "Bad Ones" is Dear's first songwriting collaboration with the sisters. Through a descending synth progression, pizzicato string sounds and a drum machine that sometimes wanders in echo, it's a song that could come straight out of Tegan And Sara's remarkable pop crossover Heartthrob, but is indelibly wired to Dear's own rich frequencies.

"I heard the piece of music Matthew sent through while driving to get a haircut in West Hollywood," Sara Quin writes in a statement. "I always feel like an interloper on that side of town and the phrase 'freaking out and paralyzed' was suddenly looping in my head. I couldn't stop thinking about how finding someone who loves the more complicated parts of you is a relief, especially when they're not turned off by your socially awkward insecurities or tendencies to retreat inward. Matthew's music has always been my go-to for late-night bus rides in headphones and I still geek out that we made this together!"

"Bad Ones" is available now via Ghostly International. Read our 10-year anniversary piece on Tegan And Sara'sThe Con.