I love working with Angel Deradoorian, she's a joy to work with. She's fab at singing and she has a real... she has an understanding that's both intellectual and emotional about singing, that I think that very few people have.

I guess I have some kind of a visceral connection with drums. I'm looking to create music that people can react to viscerally, and people will respond to viscerally. I think that you can listen to music, to a song you've never heard before and not really like it, but also feel like you're responding to it physically whether you like it or not. I think that's a powerful aspect about music, and I think that's something that draws me to drums.

I feel connected to every song on this record [ 'Modern Vampires Of The City' ], but yeah I think there's something special about 'Young Lion'. It's pretty different from any song that we've had before because the vocals are kind of between two different very simple instrumental piano melodies and it's almost like something that we call a vignette, it's sort of like a miniature.

I like the idea that a song can be something that you can lean on, both for the songwriter and for the person who hears the song.

I wanted to make an album where every song is kind of interacting - where you can't tell what's the string arrangement and what's the song. I guess that came out of going to college, majoring in music, studying classical music, and even as a kid, being really drawn to classical music.

It's hard to say how time factors into your work, because sometimes things will come to you very quickly, but it will take years for the ideas to be gestating in your mind.

We've always said that our band is pretty much an open system and there's no rules governing anything... so who knows what the future will hold?