Even people that are close to me or people that are acquaintances... The only question I get now is, 'How is music going?' It's an overpowering quality of my life now, the fact that I write songs. It's weird to navigate what that means socially.

I really believe in hopefulness and respect people that are hopeful. I think I'm at my best when I think hopefully.

My mom is an elementary school music teacher, a pianist, and a singer, and my dad plays guitar - he's a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. My mom does musical theater, too. All of those influences were around.

Speaking and singing were equally common in my house. I started songwriting about the time that I started forming sentences.

Music was always encouraged as a passion and a hobby, but I was never told, 'This should be your job. You write music and record for a living.' It doesn't happen for people.

If you can come out from under pain, why wouldn't you? You definitely can. There's no question.

I have a huge note on my phone where things just start popping up. It doesn't make that much sense to me at the time, but once a song is finished, I can read into it and figure out who the characters are in my life.

I was adopted, and so was my mom. And so I just was in tune with how life can be intentional. I feel like maybe that helped me to not feel super entitled to a lot of things as a kid.

I haven't studied history - I couldn't give a discourse in medieval literature - but I am a personal historian, and I do a lot to take in the histories of the people around me.

I always wrote songs. Elementary school, middle school. It didn't feel more creative than speaking. It was just normal to do that.

The phrase 'no burden' largely captured what I wish people believed about themselves.

In middle school, you're figuring out how you're affecting people, and sometimes you're affecting people negatively. And what sucks is that it can affect people for their whole lives. I didn't realize I was a part of that.

I was always taught to be grateful, and so the question came early: What is there to be grateful for? Why is life supposed to be so good? That's still a question I try to answer all the time.

I'm going to name my daughter Emily.

I value the people who are willing to make themselves vulnerable and share work that is sensitive and maybe even hard to sing sometimes. Because that's the music that provides the most solace and solidarity to the world.

Hopefully when you listen to a song, you can say, 'That's me,' or 'That's someone I know' - you relate to it in a way that's cathartic.

I called it 'Historian' because I feel like most of my creative efforts are efforts to capture something or to document it.

My dad plays guitar in the church band, so it's like music as a service. He plays at old-people homes, so that's like music as a gift.

'No Burden' is not necessarily ferocious.

I've written in the middle of a conversation or the grocery store or at another band's concert or in the last moments before falling asleep. It's pretty unpredictable. I think it's always flowing, and sometimes I'm not listening. There's no formula for when I'm going to be able to be a good listener to myself.

I never considered a career in music because it was too unattainable. I just didn't believe it was possible.

Even if somebody wanted to tell me what one of my songs meant to him or her, I can't do it - I would be probably put to tears every time.

For a while, I called myself an agnostic, which was me wanting to maintain a connection to the culture I was raised in while also undercutting a lot of the beliefs I had.

I guess the point of that song 'Troublemaker, Doppelganger' is trying to navigate the worth of beauty and if it's hurtful or helpful to value beauty. If it's a curse or a blessing. Is that something really negative and morbid, like the hearse, or is it the limousine - a glamorous symbol of enjoying life?