David J was in Asheville, North Carolina for a gig when a protest erupted right under his hotel window. “I was woken up early in the morning with the sound of it,” the L.A.-based musician says on a recent video call. “I just went down to the street and joined in.”

The event provided a spark of inspiration for J, who was already troubled by what he had been seeing in the United States. “Just being amongst that community there, just really good decent people speaking out against this authoritarian horror that’s being visited upon us, that was the galvanizing moment,” he says. Lyrics for what would become “ICE to Cold to Thaw,” the recently released single from David J and the Resistance, began to take shape.