I'm not very good at playing piano, so I usually hit chords with my right hand. And those chords came, and I was just singing a little bit.

[My House By The Water] is a nice instrumental track. The sound of the water is from the same place where the front photo was taken. I live really close to the airport, so there's also planes going over. It's kind of to remind me of living in there, because I'm not gonna be living in there for very much longer.

I mean, Lady Gaga is trying to be a freak or whatever but that quality of being very meaningly and heartfelt, but also having a sense of humor about it, bands don't do that anymore. Lady Gaga's songs are cheesy. The Beatles weren't cheesy. That's the hardest thing with music: to not be cheesy, but also be meaningful. That's the goal, I think.

Journalists say my music is "blue wave," or "dreamy," or "jangly-slacker jewel," and none of it really makes sense to me.

I really love a lot of Japanese music, like Ryuichi Sakamoto and this guy I got really into, Tatsuro Yamashita. When I was a little younger, I thought synthesizers meant Kraftwerk, cold, robotic, weird, Autobahn. But these guys are having a lot of fun on these things. Sometimes. Sometimes it's very somber. They could go either way.

Patience is important, and also, if you don't want to do it, don't do it. But if you do, do. That's a general rule in how I live my life.

It was weird [touring with them]. It felt more like we were playing for Phoenix. They asked us because they're fans of what we do.