Chemistry cannot be manufactured or forced, so Wild Flag was not a sure thing, it was a 'maybe,' a 'possibility.' But after a handful of practice sessions, spread out over a period of months, I think we all realized that we could be greater than the sum of our parts.

I have no desire to play music unless I need music.

It was writing about music for NPR - connecting with music fans and experiencing a sense of community - that made me want to write songs again. I began to feel I was in my head too much about music, too analytical.

After Sleater-Kinney broke up in 2006 I had very little desire to play music. It took well over three years before picking up a guitar meant anything to me other than an exercise.

It turns out I'm not very good at working with a traditional boss.

Well, in some ways I had sort of the opposite experience of other people that are sort of dreaming of being in a rock band. I was dreaming of like corporate lunches and just like, and I'm not really joking. Like the whole idea to me was really appealing.

For a while I had somebody that came to clean my house that turned out to be in a band that I really loved.

With Rock Band, you can play along to Black Sabbath or Nirvana and possibly find new ways of appreciating their artistry by being allowed to perform parallel to it. Rock Band puts you inside the guts of a song.

It's hard to beat the visceral high of playing live and creating something spontaneous.

Rock Band is more like Stairmaster than it is like rock 'n' roll - it's the same steps with different degrees of difficulty.

The process of coming out, as much as other people want to couch it in terms of politics, it's a very personal journey.

'Wii Music' elevates the scope of music video games by moving beyond commentary on what music is - as 'Rock Band' and 'Guitar Hero' do - to suggesting what it could be. Yet I'm still left wondering: Couldn't it be more?

The hedonistic lifestyle is difficult to achieve when you're still carrying your own gear. Trust me that you don't feel glamorous with a 60-pound amp in your arms; it's a lot less sexy than toting a vodka gimlet and impossible to do in heels.

The Northwest, to make a generalization, is a fairly sensitive populace. Slightly self-conscious and very self-reflexive.

I get mad at myself when I get news from Twitter before I get it from a regular news source. Then I'm off to a bad start: getting the second-hand, filtered experience all day long.

I think one of the scariest things about depression is that it exists along with the happiness and the joy, and it kind of plays with it and sucks the color from it.

I really don't know what to do when my life is not chaotic.

The game Rock Band has been haunting me like a bad ring tone. It gets stuck in my head and momentarily effaces all that I love about music.

I think music took hold of me and captured my imagination at such a formative age that I ascribe a mysteriousness to it, and I exalt it and take it seriously in a way that I think has just permeated my life ever since. And I'm less interested in music that is novelty or jokey or ironic.

I think that there's so many versions of femininity, and in terms of gender as a binary construct, that seems to be being dismantled.

Grief is sort of the allowance of feeling.

With music, I get to a much darker place. Where I'm able to go with 'Portlandia' has a wider range, but also a brighter range.

I will say, as a woman, when you put a mustache on, you find out a lot of things about yourself.

I always find that nostalgia is sort of like memory without the pain. And that's why it feels so good to kind of bask in that, and I think it can be deceptively comforting.