It was like the part of me that had enjoyed those friends had evaporated, leaving behind a huge, echoing emptiness, and I was scrabbling on the edge of it, trying not to fall into the hole within myself because I was terrified to find out how far down it went.

[In making music] it's nice to not have a goal, to not have a set format. It's very liberating to just get out of your comfort zone and be in a new space.

Prince is king to me. As this half-naked, short black guy who looked like a girl in the 70s and 80s, he was talking about women in a way that was very unusual because he didn't objectify them.

Having access to mobile phones and being able to document your own life brings people together.

I wondered what things what things became when you no longer needed them, and I wondered what the future would hold once we'd gotten past our personal tragedies and proven them ultimately survivable.

It was about being able to dance like Cassidy did, as though no one was watching, as though the moment was infinite enough without needing to document its existence.

When I started making music, I made music in a very commercial space and I didn't have room to really explore things on my own terms. It took me awhile to create a little bubble where I could explore other things, and new things. When I did that, my tools were songwriting and arranging.