Blood Bank

Vernon told NPR it was written and recorded among the songs that became For Emma, Forever Ago but did not fit that record's story, so he gave it an EP of its own. He called it a fictional love story whose secret is the connection people have to each other. Stereogum heard two people giving blood, with blood standing for family, history and possibility, and called it his most concrete lyric so far. Chris DeVille noted that, unlike most Bon Iver songs, it brings two people together rather than pulling them apart.

Stereogum premiered the studio version in December 2008. By then the band had been playing it live with crashing cymbals, while the record opens on quiet stacked harmonies and falsetto. It reached 37 on the UK Singles Chart.

Live and covers

First played at Lee's Palace in Toronto on 22 July 2008, it is the band's second most played song, logged 321 times. A performance at the Ericsson Globe in Stockholm on 31 October 2018 was added to the 2020 reissue. The Mountain Goats, Third Eye Blind, the Tallest Man on Earth and Architects have all covered it. John Darnielle first heard it as a song about drug users selling plasma in the Pacific Northwest of the 1980s, and said it now reminds him of friends he has lost. The upload in the hypersongs web is the studio recording, set to an animated video by Aaron Anderson, with artwork by Eric Timothy Carlson, made for the 2020 tenth anniversary edition.