The album sees a departure from the band's reliance on the Nintendocore sound which predominantly defined their earlier records; instead, Desperate Living explores more experimental qualities.

The album is also unique in comparison with the band's previous work in that there is considerably more synthesized bass, orchestration, and drum programming featured.

Classical pianist Valentina Lisitsa is also featured on the song "Rape Escape", playing "a fragment of the cadenza of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No.

Engstrom was very satisfied with her inclusion on the album by also stating "Only a handful of pianists in the world could play the piece, and she embarasses (sic) every single one of them."

[9] Stewart commented on his role in the recording process, stating, "Horse the band has asked me to try to help them make a dying robot, an exploding keyboard, a dream laugh, and a melted, drastic flute of redemption.