Thanks to the fine folks at Warner Chappell—along with some lax security and dim lighting—on 9/12, HITS partook in a screening of the much-buzzed-about A24 flick, I Saw the TV Glow at AMC Theaters at L.A.’s The Grove and even managed to overstay our (not) welcome and stuck around afterwards for a Q&A with the film’s co-music supervisor and co-founder of Secretly Group, Chris Swanson and Sloppy Jane lead singer, Haley Dahl (who appears in the film)—all moderated by Grammy-winning music engineer Emerson Mancini.

I Saw the TV Glow is a psychologically tense homage to sexy-ish soft-horror, mid-'90s TV series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files, which connected with a generation of Hot Topic-shopping teens. The film’s writer/director, Jane Schoenbrun’s—whose deep affection for the equal-parts-optimism-and-nihilism music of the era prompted Swanson and his team at A24 to take a new approach to curating the film's soundtrack.

Instead of traversing the precipitous terrain of negotiating and securing pre-existing tracks for the film, Swanson directly approached indie and up-and-coming artists like Caroline Polachek, Sloppy Jane, King Woman and yeule, among others to create bespoke songs for specific scenes. “It’s a beautiful thing when a director knows exactly what role they want music to play in their film,” said Swanson.

Swanson’s inverse-curation approach is responsible for birthing a soundtrack that lands at the pitch-perfect intersection of rage and torpidity. “A strong soundtrack to a favorite film can make its way into the fans’ imaginations and subsequently get played many dozens of times, get added onto playlists and ultimately re-soundtrack beautiful memories,” said Swanson. “Is there any better marketing for a film than this amazing cycle?” The latchkey kid in all of us agrees.

Trot out those Dr. Martens and babydoll dresses, friends. I Saw the TV Glow is now streaming on MAX.

Pictured here thinking about how much they prefer earthquakes to appearing in this publication are music supe Chris Swanson, moderator and engineer Emerson Mancini, artist Hayley Dahl aka Sloppy Jane and the Recording Academy's Qiana Conley Akinro.