Major labels just lost their way. It's like the housing bubble. They lost a sense of the fundamentals.

What I miss [about church] is being forced to be in community with people that aren't the same as me.

I always find live shows on film kind of boring. Even my favorite ones, I kinda zone out for most of it. It's just so different seeing a band in the flesh and then watching a film of it, even if you have a hundred cameras and it's shot from every angle. There's just a communal, visceral thing that never translates very well.

Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, true to your nature.

When I was living in Boston I worked in this store that played the college radio station. I had to listen to it all day, and I didn't care for most of it.

Once I got to know what's been happening historically, it's pretty impossible to un-know it. Like right now, there's the outbreak of cholera in Haiti, and people see that as a news headline, but I know there's half a billion dollars of aid that one senator is putting a hold on, that the Red Cross has raised half a billion dollars but has only spent $200 million.

I don't think the emotional quality is the defining quality of the music but it's definitely something that people have picked up on a lot