The aggressive, energised, political, or even politicised, culturally aware music hasn't really existed [recently].

All I want to do with my life is try and make music that I really love, and so every day I try and work on music.

I always just made music that resonates with me emotionally.

I learned in the last few years that it's really unhappy and really unsustainable to try and base your well being on something as arbitrary as record sale and critical acclaim and the interests of the public. All of those things are so fickle. So my approach now to music is I want to make records that I love, and I hope that other people love them, then that's OK.

I'm actually cautiously optimistic that Donald Trump will be so bad that he will force America to wake up and realise that forcing America to vote for right wing Republicans is always a terrible idea. It's never been a good idea, but what happened here is you have a president like Obama who gives you eight years of relative stability and prosperity, and people forget that Republicans are just terrible, not just for the country but for the planet. Maybe this is America's equivalent of bottoming out, like a crystal meth addict going on one last big run before they have to get sober.

In the course of my life, I've made some happy songs but it's the more sort of like pathos-laden, emotional, melancholic music that either I make or that other people make that really resonates with me.

That’s why I make music. When I listen to my favorite music made by other people, that’s what it does to me. So as a musician, I’m just trying to do the same thing with music I make. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But when someone comes to me and says the music I’ve made has affected them emotionally, that’s the most gratifying part of my job.