Sometimes I joke around that if I weren't a musician, I would be a power lifter. I don't think people expect it from me because I'm little.

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.

You're born and then you're on your own, you start having relationships, you're developing relationships to the world and your wider community, and then disappointing things happen.

I have a hard time really claiming my place as a songwriter or as doing anything of import really because I feel like I'm tooting my own horn in a way.

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.

What I try to communicate is that there's a lot of crossover between that feeling of romantic heartbreak and this devastating feeling of knowing that we've punched a hole in the planet and it's spilling out oil and destroying the Gulf of Mexico and the ecosystem and seabirds and every creature.

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.