Song for Zula

Houck wrote it and recorded it at home in Greenpoint for Muchacho. SPIN premiered it as the first single in December 2012 and described a swarm of strings and an upbeat electronic pulse, a clear change from the full-band sound of Here's to Taking It Easy and To Willie. Houck told the magazine that he went to Tulum with a guitar, and the Austin Chronicle singled out Ricky Ray Jackson's pedal steel on the record.

Critics read it as a song about a failed relationship. The Austin Chronicle heard a narrator left caged and guarded and called it an unflinching triumph. Flagpole described a wistful waltz that could suit a wedding's first dance while hiding a bitterly resolute meditation on love's casualties. Diffuser thought it seemed to foreshadow a Bon Iver turn for Houck. Pitchfork's Jayson Greene heard the song's synths mingling with crystalline threads of pedal steel, and quoted the line in which the narrator insists he is not some broken thing.

The video, co-directed by Houck and Wahlrab, premiered on 27 March 2013. It is a single slow tracking shot of a woman trying to break free of chains by smashing them with rocks. Houck said he wanted the viewer to feel chained too, and Wahlrab said the reverb pulls you back, echoing one beat behind.

Live and afterlife

Houck played it on Jimmy Fallon's show in 2013 with many strings, hand percussion and a full band, and recorded a WFUV Studio A session published in April 2013. A 2013 BBC Radio performance opens The BBC Sessions EP, whose press text calls the song an undeniable benchmark for Phosphorescent. A version from the December 2013 Music Hall of Williamsburg run is on Live at the Music Hall, where Pitchfork's Grayson Haver Currin noted that a string quartet joins the band. Reviewing the BBC EP, Pitchfork's Stephen M. Deusner called Zula one of the most tough-hearted love songs of the 2010s.

The song has been used in The Spectacular Now, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the Superstore finale All Sales Final, Matthias et Maxime and Adam Curtis's Can't Get You Out of My Head. The upload in the hypersongs web is the official music video on PhosphorescentVEVO.