St. Lucia

“It's important to let things go.”

“When 'OK Computer' came out, that was so crazily different from anything that I'd ever heard; it was just amazing.”

“St. Lucia represents, for me, where I found myself musically once I stopped trying to be cool, in some way, and stopped stopping these guilty pleasure influences I had from coming through.”

“I was always into things like Boyz II Men and boy bands, and then I got into Radiohead and alt-rock.”

“One of my favorite things is producing other artists because, in many ways, it's a lot more freeing than working on your own music.”

“The first city I ever came to in the states was Des Moines. I was 12 and was in a boys' choir.”

“I went through all these different phases. But it always felt like I was impersonating something, so I went back to some of the music I grew up with, like music from South Africa and the '80s stuff. I stopped suppressing it, and I stopped trying to be cool.”

“Hearing about a visual artist's approach can change the way you think about songwriting.”

“The reason I decided to become a solo artist in the first place was because I always felt that the results that I got from working as a team where everyone had equal say... ended up with compromised, watered-down results.”

“I basically work all the time.”

“My lyrics are quite train of thought, and they are all over the place, but they evoke something.”

“The '80s definitely influence my music in a big way.”

“I'm kind of a little allergic to that whole, 'Let's go to L.A. and write a bunch of hits.'”

“When I start working on an idea, I immediately record without judging it.”

“I don't think I necessarily write about dark things.”

“I was always very ambitious from a young age.”

“The music has a very strong escapist quality to it. In the moment where you feel like you need to escape, or when you are escaping, that's a good time to listen to 'When the Night.'”

“At a festival, some people are just there because they're waiting for, like, Calvin Harris to come on later.”

“I try to not be self-conscious in my writing process. I think it's important to just be in your subconscious mind - at least when you're starting an idea.”

“It's pretty rare that something I've written is close to something that's pre-existed.”