"there was definitely a sense of collaboration. [...] I had ideas, but then I was also open to other people's ideas". For example, while the credits did not separate individual contributions, Khaela Maricich wrote the track "(Something)". Elverum's lyrics were inspired by the poetic nature and mysteriousness of Will Oldham's lyrics. The album was recorded between September 24, 1999 and March 6, 2000, and was released on September 26, 2000 via K Records. Music and themes Critics described It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water as an indie rock, lo-fi, and indie pop album. The album's lyricism is themed heavily on nature, influenced by Elverum's home town being in the Pacific Northwest. Elverum explained, "when I was 21, [...] using these big, huge natural world metaphors to try and tell my own stories, I think I couldn't see outside of it. [...] It was like my only vocabulary." The album was the first in a trilogy of albums themed on nature: It Was Hot explored the theme of water; The Glow, Pt. 2 represented fire and air, and Mount Eerie represented rock. During recording, Elverum frequently visited the ocean in and around Westport, Washington, contributing to the album's theme of the ocean, lakes, and swimming. The album introduced the concept of the "glow" on the 11-minute track "The Glow"; the concept was explored further in The Glow, Pt. 2. Elverum described the "glow" as a "glowing window that you see as you are freezing to death in the snow, or the light you go into supposedly when you die". The opening track, "The Pull", begins with an acoustic guitar that rhythmically pans between the left and right speakers. The acoustic guitar later gives way to a dynamic shift: a burst of noisy guitars and reverbed snare drums, described by Matt LeMay of Pitchfork as a "sonic blast". LeMay also wrote, "despite the dissonance and the atypical song structure, the track never breaks down into complete anarchy". According to Adam Nelson of The Line of Best Fit, the lyrics of the track are about being free from a physical form; Nelson wrote that the track "makes death into an absolving liberation". The brief "Ice" begins with a similar blast of noise and percussion before winding down to an acoustic section. The track "Sand" is a cover of a 1993 Eric's Trip song of the same name. The cover, described by