One of our very favorite shows of 2008 was our Slowtrain instore. We drove straight from San Francisco, pulled up to the back of the store, dragged our entire setup inside and played our new album, Rook, start-to-finish - and they let us get away with it.

It's a very different feeling just sitting around the side, playing piano, and dancing around as opposed to standing in front and singing.

I really want to try to protect as much as I can, to safeguard peoples' first experience with a record. Because I want you to get the whole thing as one integrated piece, because it's not like I'm narrating stories with music behind them.

One of our very favorite shows of 2008 was our Slowtrain instore. We drove straight from San Francisco, pulled up to the back of the store, dragged our entire setup inside and played our new album, Rook, start-to-finish - and they let us get away with it.

I do like the old versions of our songs - there are good things in them, but I think that the good things that happen in the new ones kind of outweigh that. The murkiness of the first version of the record was not really what we'd intended. It has sort of a dream-like quality, but I feel like that has been preserved in other ways in the newer versions, as well as the bonus disc.

I just like dealing with scientists for awhile and then going over and dealing with musicians for awhile. They both have qualities that kind of counterbalance each other.

I don't feel [the] excitement you have when you first walk into a recording studio. It now feels like a tool.