Tim said in an interview:

I think we had at least the melody of the song and the chords and everything, but it really didn’t have a groove or anything like that. When I was doing the demo, I just thought oh, rather than having another kind of indie rock and roll sort of rhythm, that I’ll try something a bit more bouncy, and you know, add that groove, then I was playing a sort of funky guitar and then I got out one of my old synthesizers that I actually never play – I bought in a junk shop in Toronto, I think. So I was just playing around with it and came up with this sound, and it’s the sound you hear in the riff. I thought “Wow, that’s pretty great,” and went off to bed because it was the middle of the night by then. And then I woke up the next morning I thought, “Ah, you slipped a little Bowie in there!” By the time you have that creative impulse, and something is kind of organically called a song, that stuff is the kind of magic you have to go with, I think. The synth has a hint of “Ashes to Ashes” but I think the song, even if you take away that riff, the song I think, is one of the best I’ve written.