It's kind of always been a secret fantasy of mine, the idea of writing a song and then not having to be the face of it.

Trying new things and experimenting is something I push myself to do. It's one thing to have love for all different kinds of music; it's another thing to bring them together seamlessly and make them coherent.

It's funny how concert dreams are such a recurring thing among musicians. It's like how everyone has that dream of their teeth falling out? Except musicians have this dream of just standing onstage and there being all these people out there, and for some reason, the song isn't starting.

For me, the value of music is the value you extract from it.

I had this weird fetish for making the guitar sound like it wasn't a guitar to try and trick people into actually thinking it was a keyboard. I don't know why that was such an obsession, why I didn't just get a keyboard. I guess it was because I had no money.

After my grunge phase, I started opening my horizons and listening to more electronic stuff. I got into Radiohead, specifically 'Amnesiac' - my brother gave me that album.

The way I do it is there's never recording 'sessions.' One finishes, the next one starts. It's just continuous.

Once I've got something that I feel is strong, if I get long enough to think about it, it'll turn into something. I'll start thinking about the drums - what the drums are doing, what the bass is doing. Then, if I can remember it by the time I get to a recording device, it'll turn into a song.

For 'Lonerism,' I really wanted make a non-psychedelic record. That's why the dominant instrument is the synthesiser, but maybe it didn't quite turn out that way.

The inspiration to write a song comes to me when something has happened to me more than once. If it's happened to me more than once, it's probably happened to other people.

I guess I'm not saying that I think music should be free, but I do think that if people can get it for free, there's nothing anyone can do to stop them. It's kind of a waste of energy to try and force them to pay for it if they don't have to.

I used to download music illegally. Everyone has. No one is innocent. Everyone has done that.

If someone says, 'Hey man, I love your album, it really got me through a breakup, but I downloaded it for free,' I'll be like, 'Good! That's good!' Maybe he didn't have the money for the album, but if he still listened to it, and it's an important part of his life, that's all I can ask for. I don't want his twenty bucks.

Obviously, artists need to make money and stuff like that, but if you do something good or if you make good art or make good stuff, the wealth will find you in some way.

I think after a long tour and after an album, your brain feels like it wants to relax, but at the same time, making music for me is something that comes kind of naturally. Just like a brain process.

I always manage to keep myself busy.

What do you call that when you add '-ism' on the end of a word? What is that process? 'Wordism'? Something like that, yeah.

My mum was quite poor, and my dad was rich. She didn't dig that, so she left him.

I was always putting songs on the Internet, but I was never into pushing them on anyone.

I don't like the idea that I'm a one-trick pony, even if I am! No matter what else I do, I have to make sure that 'Elephant' isn't Tame Impala's biggest song anywhere.

In the end, for me, music is such an internal thing that to let the outside world influence would be against my modus operandi.

When I became a 'rock musician,' I assumed pop music was easy to write and that interesting rock music, or alternative music, was hard. It was only later I realised that writing a pop song is the hardest thing musically.

With each award we get, we become a little bit more overrated. That's what it feels like.

For me, working alone is being able to express, which is the artistic part.

It's 2013, and you can make music anywhere. We've got laptops.

I actually think looking to the past for inspiration is pretty redundant.

The worst time for me is in the final few hours of taking a track that you've worked on for two years and bouncing it down to the final stereo mix. The overwhelming emotion for me is complete and utter fear that I've made a mistake. I'm scared. Afterward, I obsess endlessly about it.

I've played festivals in Australia. If it's a dance music festival or mainstream festival, there's maybe, like, 10 percent who pay attention to the music.

Bands can become absolutely huge and actually be pretty terrible musicians, and bands can be the most amazing songwriters and musicians in the world and never play for more than 10 people. With that in mind, getting successful doesn't mean anything.

I didn't even know that small bands played in Las Vegas. I just thought it was, like, Celine Dion and stuff.

When I try and extract what it is about my music that I do or love or try to create, I'm never aware of it at the time. I just make something.

For me, I'm just too bad at remembering the details of lengths of parts of songs, so if we had backing tracks, it would be a recipe for disaster.

I feel like music will be free sooner or later, and I think I'm all for it.

I write songs every day, but I don't necessarily get to record them.

I just record whenever I can, whenever I'm home, whenever I have access to something that can make music.

I'm always working on new music.

I write songs every day, but only a few of them get finished.

I never know when a record is finished until it's almost finished.

If I'm recording a song, and it's kind of fuzzed out, but I've got this super candy melody, I feel nothing but freedom that I can just sing over the top, and it will be appreciated. It won't be like, 'What is he doing?'

For me, pop melodies are their own thing that have their own emotion, but they don't necessarily belong exclusively in a pop song.

I love the Beatles, but I don't listen to them at all regularly. Most of my friends are bigger Beatles fans than I am. I respect them, and I love them - 'Abbey Road' is probably one of my favorite albums, but I don't think I've ever listened to the 'White Album' the whole way through.

I'd say most of the rest of the world are bigger Beatles fans than me. They'd know more of the songs and more of the lyrics - I don't really know that stuff. I just respect them.

I don't think I've ever listened to 'Sgt. Pepper's' the whole way through.

'Lonerism' is such an insular, detached album.

I wouldn't say making psychedelic music is my focus. That's not the modus operandi for Tame Impala. It's about making music that moves people.

One of my mottos for 'Currents' was 'Give the song what it deserves.' How would this song flourish? If the song could tell me what it wants, what can I give it? I tried not to dictate it with any sensible or logical decisions.

Even if people say you look cool and you did well, it's extremely cringey to watch yourself rocking out. It's like listening to your own voice on an answering machine times a hundred, because you're hearing your voice through a microphone outside of a PA at a hundred decibels.

Whatever it is that my heart wants, I'll do it, which is different than I used to be. I used to tell my heart what it wanted.

Sometimes you really rely on the audience to have a good time playing live, and sometimes you could have zero people or a thousand, and you'd feel exactly the same.

If I'm really jet-lagged and need to get to sleep, I just try and watch cartoons. As long as it's animated, I don't care - it has to have that distance from real life.