I'm not against being proud of where you come from but I feel like sometimes the divisions are a little too bold and it hurts us more than it helps us.

I just had a really crappy time in school and I spent a lot of time writing songs and not doing work. I started talking to Noah - Panda Bear - about recording a really solid album, spending a lot of time on it to get it to sound exactly the way we wanted it to.

People seem to think that folk music is people with acoustic guitars. Or punk music is people with mohawks, leather jackets.

I always thought it was important for my lyrics to come from a really honest place.

There's something scary about the unknown. And maybe the scariest movies couldn't ever be made because they are too deep in somebody's head, too unknown to get out.

Things have changed. The suburbs are developed, but other parts, like where we recorded Spirit and Danse Manatee are still woodland and farmland.

I think we stumbled onto our own sort of lore back in high school. We weren't with the drinkers, we were more the psychedelic warriors. We sat around watching horror films.