The song apparently began as a GarageBand loop layered under an old Penwell demo, built on little more than a Casio and a voice in an apartment, and that origin is audible in the best possible way. The bones of drum machines and cheap synthesisers, the gear that once let bedroom tinkerers dream bigger than their budgets, aren't treated as nostalgia bait here — they sound like the only sensible choice for the mood the pair were chasing. Comparisons to Peter Gabriel's mid-eighties gravity, Wendy & Lisa's chrome-plated soul, even Spoon's knack for making restraint sound like a hook, aren't unfair, but naming influences feels almost beside the point. Alternative rock brushes against R&B, new wave gestures flirt with something colder and more electronic, and the join is invisible.

What holds it together — forgive the pun, since the title practically demands it — is patience, and by the duo's own account that patience was hard-won. Rodriguez has spoken about letting a piece sit unfinished for a year rather than force it, and Penwell about learning to trust a process that didn't run on a studio deadline. You can hear that trust in the mix: the rhythm section refuses to hurry, the synths breathe in and out rather than stabbing for attention, and the vocal sits inside the arrangement like it belongs there rather than on top of it, dictating terms. Nothing feels bolted on. Nothing feels like a demo dressed up for release, even though a demo is precisely where it started.

Debut singles so often betray their makers by trying too hard, cramming in every idea as though the band fears it won't get a second chance to be heard. Penwell and Rodriguez do the opposite. They let one idea fill the room on its own terms, a confidence that no amount of studio polish can fake and that, by their own telling, came directly from removing the pressure of the clock. It sounds like two musicians who've finally been given room to wait for the version that feels right, rather than the version that's merely finished.

The result is a song that feels cinematic without reaching for obvious signifiers, no swelling strings, no false crescendo, and emotionally legible without spelling itself out. It closes on a note of unresolved warmth that makes you want to press play again, and that, more than any chart position, is the mark of a single doing its job properly.

If "In It Together" is a statement of intent, it's a wonderfully unshowy one, born less in a studio than in an apartment, out of a willingness to let a song tell them what it wanted to be. On this evidence, whatever The Myth Pool make next, having finally freed themselves from other people's deadlines, is well worth the wait.