I've always thought of the sky as, like, an open canvas. When I was a kid and I looked at the sky, I always remember being able to daydream, just looking at the sky, being creative, being able to design things. What would happen if we had no sky? Where would we be? Well, obviously, scientifically, without an atmosphere, we'd all be dead.

It's important for all people, and not just people in bands, to speak out on social justice issues. That means journalists or plumbers have just as much of a responsibility to do that as artists.

Civilization is a failure. We need to think what we can do together in love and peace.

I think music has the ability to inspire people and to change hearts, and the heart has the power to change the mind, and the mind has the power to change the world.

People think our music's very aggressive or angry or whatever, and it's just the opposite, really... I like laughing. And I like being really calm before a show, and smiley.

In America, there's more of the question, should music be political or should it just be for entertainment purposes, whereas around the world that's not even an issue. I think people just assume that music should be everything.

The best way to do that is to pick up a new instrument or an instrument that you don't typically write on and see where it takes you. Whether it's using an acoustic guitar, or piano, or electronics as tools, all of these lead to creating different types of songs and I used all of these methods for this record.