For Siddharta Khosla, the composer behind the scores of shows including Hulu’s Paradise and Only Murders in the Building, the winning words to get the gig for soundtracking Apple TV’s Imperfect Women were Twin Peaks.

When meeting with series creator Annie Weisman, Khosla used that reference in his pitch for the music for the thriller based on Araminta Hall’s novel. Imperfect Women stars Kate Mara as Nancy, whose murder brings her two college best friends Mary (Elisabeth Moss) and Eleanor (Kerry Washington) to investigate what happened and deconstruct their bonds in the process.

“I met with her, and she asked me, ‘What do you think? This is a thriller, and Apple is going to want some intense, thrillery score.’ And I said, Well, I think we need to play to the emotion of these three women, and I used Twin Peaks as a reference,” Khosla said, getting applause from the packed house at UCLA’s Royce Hall. “One of my favorite scores ever was Angelo Badalamenti’s score to Twin Peaks. That show taught me how to score a thriller, because it was scored with deep emotion, and it was about sort of what Laura Palmer meant to all these people in this community, and that was similar here.”

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It was kismet from there because Lesli Linka Glatter, who directed a few episodes of the original Twin Peaks series created by the late David Lynch and Mark Frost, was on board to direct the pilot episode.

“I had no idea she was involved until I got that meeting, and then [Linka Glatter] introduced herself. And I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna throw that out right now,’” he added.

Khosla revealed that he “pedaled on one note” for the entire theme that became the “question mark about what happened to Nancy,” adding a “two-part harmony around it” to represent Washington’s and Moss’ characters. He also was asked to write the ballet scene in the show, which mirrors the drama taking place throughout the eight-episode arc.

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The composer also stressed the importance of human creativity with the rise of AI.

“And I think it’s really, really important to remember that nothing can replace the human touch,” Khosla said. “It’s important that we keep on encouraging each other to be creative, to find our unique voices in these shows. I grew up in India, and half of this stuff is from my brain, just the Indian music just sitting in my blood and all those life experiences [that] are so deeply personal. We as composers and musicians should share that with our showrunners and directors to create something original and fresh that can’t be sort of beaten by whatever is coming our way.”

Check out the panel video above.