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

I don't listen to music throughout the day very often. I don't own a record player. I don't really have a stereo system. Most of the music I listen to these days is on the web or on MySpace pages, stuff like that.

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 feel like, these days there's so much music and so many bands, that it's exciting to hear when people go through the whole process with their own sort of system of making the music. It gives it a much more personal individual feel, like unique feel, when somebody has a really idiosyncratic set-up, or they just have what might be considered strange ways of going about the process that yields results that are not just cookie-cutter sounds like everything else... and I think that can only be a positive thing.

I didn't grow up as a religious person under any sort of system or anything like that, I just felt like I've always been sort of intrigued by that - how it can make people's lives better - I mean, it's a powerful thing. So I was interested in thinking about that kind of stuff.

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.