It's awkward, because sometimes you find new friends that are cooler than your old friends, and then your old friends desperately try to cling on to you even though you sort of hate them by now.

I guess I don't really know any other way to do it, it just feels like the natural way to do things for me. Like - if I'm writing a song - it has to have some sort of value. Or it only has some kind of value to me, if it's something really personal. It has to mean something to me. I guess it is a little uncomfortable, or it's a little embarrassing sometimes, to know that stuff that honest is out there. But, when I hand off the thing, when it's totally done and mastered and sent, I kinda feel like it doesn't belong to me anymore.

When you create something you leave little crumbs of stuff that you've experienced or music that you've listened to.

Even though there's stuff that I really like that is just a retro sort of style or whatever, I feel like what I'm most excited by is new mixes of things.

I have no interest in making music solely for a white audience. If that's what our audience is, I don't really feel responsible for that.

I was really psyched about crooner types like Frank Sinatra or Scott Walker. Something that comes more from the stomach than the throat. There's an emotional thrust to singing that way that I wanted to try on my own. I can't really sing deep and strong like that, but I wanted to just aim in that direction.

Doesn't every band sort of appropriate their influences into what they do? I guess that would be my defence: if you're making something, you kinda can't help being a conduit for other things.