There's a vulnerability in music but you've also got to protect your sacred place and have a place you can still retire to that no one else knows about. So that's a thing I just try to balance.

I think the idea of being on stage and playing for people, and being able to inject a little bit of joy into their lives is a really exciting concept for me. That's definitely why I make music. It's never been for any kind of materialistic reasons, so that thought of being able to be up on stage, and being able to give something to someone in a moment of need for them - that gets me up in the morning; that really excites me.

When people ask that question, it's very hard to nail down a formula or a circumstance that I always write in, but I definitely do believe that there have been moments, musically, when I have channeled something, you know?

It's a really cool time for artists who want to strive for a little more depth in what they want to say to come forward. We live in a very fast world right now. We've got all this media and music which is so accessible to us, it's here one minute gone the next.

The fun of being in the pop world is you can really play with people's perceptions of what the word pop means.

America is definitely something I'm pretty excited about.

I want to be the kind of artist who keeps pushing on every album. I don't want to settle on a sound.