Every form of communication is for the purpose of feeling, experiencing, sharing. Everyone has their own intense journey through life, and you don't want to do it all alone. It's really meaningful to be able to share with people. Whether it's your political beliefs, or what goes on for you emotionally, or keeping track of history.

So when you're talking about lyrics in the context of music, it's not just about what the words mean, and what you were thinking about when you wrote it. It's not cognitive in that same way. It's almost like music turns words into touch, which is hard to describe, like the feeling of your shirt on your back. It's a pretty delicate thing to try to put into words. You just feel it.

I identify as being an independent artist. I think people often forget that Indie is actually short for independent. For me, the word has a meaning more than what it connotes from an industry standpoint.

I'm a terrible sentence finisher. I think that's why I'm a songwriter. When you write a song, there are no rules, and I think that I talk as if there are no rules. But then I run this great risk of no one understanding me at all.

Writing a song is almost like cheating-writing because you don't have to finish your sentences, you don't have to use any punctuation, no one's going to edit your work. It's so wide open. People just grunt and that's a song. You can kind of do anything.

The center for me is my heart, actually, and my emotional connection with the work. That's where authenticity comes from. It's also the first thing that hits me about other people's work, or watching other people perform, "Do I believe the person?" Even if I don't like what someone is doing or if I don't like the sound, if I believe them, I do like them. I am able to appreciate them as an artist.

I just write about what comes up. Sometimes you're thinking about Palestine, and sometimes you're thinking about sex. People have a lot going on.