Your kid loses a tooth, and you don’t have a one-dollar bill to put under their pillow, so you leave them alone to go get change. That’s the premise of “The Tooth Fairy,” the latest song from Owen Ashworth’s Advance Base project. The song is short and simple, and Ashworth delivers it with his usual hangdog deadpan, but it’s still enough to send you into an emotional tailspin. If you’re up on Ashworth’s work, you should be used to that by now.

Owen Ashworth has been making profoundly sad DIY synthpop records for about a quarter century now, and he’s been using the Advance Base name for about 13 of those years. Before that, he was Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. Later this week, Advance Base will release the new album Horrible Occurrences, and we’ve already posted the early tracks “The Year I Lived In Richmond” and “Brian’s Golden Hour.” Today, he shares “The Tooth Fairy.” Here’s what he says about it:

I’ve been playing “The Tooth Fairy” at my live shows since the spring, and it tends to get a strong reaction. I’ve seen more people walk out of my shows after this song than any other song I’ve written. Other people have told me that it’s their favorite song of mine. It’s a song that messes people up, myself included. I had to practice playing it for a long time before I could get through it without crying. I feel a little silly about this, partially because it’s one of my shortest songs, and also because very little actually happens in it. But some of my biggest fears from my experiences as both a parent and a child are right there in it. Sometimes it feels terrible to unload my worst thoughts and feelings into other people’s heads, but there’s also a great deal of satisfaction that comes with getting it right. To be heard and to be understood. These are the reasons I’m still compelled to write and perform songs after doing it for so many years.

At this point, I’m going to ask that you listen to the song before reading any further.

You can do that, right? Below, check out Nathania Rubin’s animated video for “The Tooth Fairy” and read the rest of what Ashworth says about the song.

Oof. Yeah. Ashworth continues:

“The Tooth Fairy” is based on an actual experience I had with my oldest kid around eight years ago, a few months before their fifth birthday. We were driving cross country, just the two of us, and we stopped for the night at a motel in a small town in northern Wyoming. We’d had a big day of driving and they were tired and it wasn’t long after they’d put on their pajamas and brushed their teeth that they were asleep. I realized I’d left my luggage in the car, so I tiptoed out of the room, quietly closing the door behind me, then walking down the motel’s interior corridor towards where I’d parked the car out in front of the motel. I noticed the neon lights of a convenience store a block away and wished I could walk over there but I knew it was a bad idea to leave my kid alone for any longer than was necessary. Instead, I started up the car and drove it around to the back of the motel where I could park it closer to our room. I returned to our room with my bag and found the motel room door open. My kid wasn’t in their bed. They weren’t in the bathroom, either. I quietly said their name before fully panicking and running outside, calling for them. I ran back around to the front of the motel and there they were, barefoot in their pajamas, standing where I’d originally parked the car when we’d arrived. They turned to me and casually asked, “Where’s the car?” They were fine. But I’ve replayed that scene a thousand times, imagining every possible outcome, everything I could have done differently, everything they could have done differently. I’ve tried to put that feeling into a song a few different times, but I just couldn’t get it right. But I was stuck on the images of that convenience store down the street, the empty motel bed, and my kid standing in the motel parking lot in their pajamas and bare feet.

Meanwhile, I’d also been trying to write a song about getting a text from my wife asking if I had a one dollar bill. Our youngest kid had lost a tooth, and one of us was going to have to be the tooth fairy that night, but neither of us had any small bills. It was meant to be a much lighter story about the duties of parenthood. Somehow, those two stories turned into one song, and although “The Tooth Fairy” is a fictional song about fictional characters, it gets closer to my real feelings than my previous attempts to tell two separate true stories.

Horrible Occurrences is out 12/6 on Run For Cover.