I'm interested in the crevices, and the grotesque, and the unsavory. That started out when I was young... I've never quite been able to shake that.

I think a lot of the intention of bands, especially in the last year, is to spread themselves out geographically and borrow from different cultures and different sounds, and to be eclectic. And that's great in terms of dynamics, but it also tends to not have that torpedo and fire running through it. If you're spreading yourself out across the globe, you're also not emphasizing a singular point, which I think great rock music has always done.

I think short-term goals are important. Trying to set a missive for yourself for the entire year can be daunting, and it can feel too easy to fail or fall short of that.

With Portlandia, I don't think our intention is always to find something funny. Sometimes the humor comes from taking something really seriously. We're okay with making somebody feel uncomfortable or uneasy.

Practice. Learn and then unlearn - that's the trick in finding your own style of playing. You can't merely emulate, you have to innovate, or at the very least create your own path into the process.

For a while I had somebody that came to clean my house that turned out to be in a band that I really loved.

Rihanna has guts and she always seems to be singing from someplace honest, dark and fierce.