I love people like Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks and David Bowie - people that project themselves as characters and that contextualizes the music.

I lived with my godmother and mother in New Zealand until I was seven. They were both Jungian psychologists and had a homeless shelter for street gang members in New Zealand.

In the beginning I had a lot of self-imposed limitations as far as production and instrumentation. It was really inspiring for us at the time, because those limitations allowed us to push ourselves as songwriters and gave us a strong sound that people could recognize as ours, like wearing a leather jacket every day. A uniform. They know it's you - and that's great - but my original intention wasn't to be a shoegaze band or to be derivative of one sound.

There's nothing more fun than feeling frequencies and learning about equipment - everybody should do that. But if you're going to put your heart into an album and you want to give it to the world and add to the conversation, I think it's really important to take your time.

It's really cool what you can do with a guitar and a Fender Twin and a space echo.

The visual side of being a performer or in a band is, to me, as important as the music. I know not everyone shares that same opinion, but when I'm writing songs or working on lyrics or coming up with an idea, I think about videos as I'm in the studio. If I had all the money in the world, I would have the most amazing videos ever, you know? You're saying grandiose, and big; if the song warrants it, I try to push the visuals as far as I can.

I'm very much into collaboration. I think that collaboration is the road to making something great. I respect artists that are more autocrats and are in control of their own projects, but it's not really my style. I've always had that partnership.