New York City, 1982. A woman who was once the most popular singer in the world now finds herself largely forgotten and in the grip of a deadly affliction. A younger woman, a sometime-D.J. and a survivor of a horrific childhood accident, sees musical apartheid wherever she turns. An undercover cop tries to reconnect to a long-subsumed musical memory. Pop music itself seems perched on the edge of a precipice. Why Do Birds presents pop music as not just soundtrack but as the very lifeblood of its characters, as they turn to it for nothing short of regained innocence.