I'm not a big risk-taker - being bad just wasn't worth my time or the risk of having the consequences for it. So maybe I'm a little bit lame for that.

My favorite music is when the sound is supplementing the message. I don't think it's dramatic; it's cinematic.

I've been adjusting to what it means to be a songwriter, figuring out what I like about it and what I don't like about it and what it means to me as opposed to other people.

People actually tell me that I'm living my dream. And I'm like, 'It's a little more nuanced than that.'

I heard during our label-searching that some labels hire statisticians instead of A&R people. They'll reach out to the bands that will statistically perform best monetarily instead of going out to shows and having an opinion on which music is good or bad.

When I finished reading '100 Years of Solitude,' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I got really sad. I thought, 'This will never happen for me, for the first time, ever again.' Then I opened 'Beauty Is a Wound.' It's a completely different story and writing style, but it has a similar place in my heart now.

When you're a kid, you learn whatever your parents think until you start taking in media. Because all your friends are your age as well, media is the third parent that you ever have. So I think about that a lot, what visual imagery is teaching us, and media in general having a huge impact.

There is no 'stop' - there's always 'go' on both sides: always keep writing, always keep recording. I don't find them to be segmented processes.

It seems like there's a real world for new ideas in Philly.

What's cool about Matador is that everyone I've met there is just so chill and really into what they're doing. Everyone that works there, there's just such a lack of ego, and there's such a commitment to what they're doing. They all like each other.

I think 'Historian' is ultimately a positive record, but I was a little bit worried about taking people into a dark world. I tried to do it with as much care as possible, but it's not easy to ask people to think about death or loss or confusion.

I don't have any weird gimmicks. I do put on lipstick for the show. That's what separates it. 'Cause I don't wear makeup at all... That's probably the closest thing I have to a routine.

I would not say that my relationships are becoming shallow; if anything, some of them are really being tested in a way that I'm so thankful for my friends that call me and still want to talk.

I don't retain facts very well when it comes to music history.

A journal is your completely unaltered voice - it's just for you. And if you know that voice, and you like it, you can bring it out to everyone else, and that's the most honest and vulnerable thing you can do.

Every breakup is preceded by a bad relationship. So breakups should be cause for celebration and triumph.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

'No Burden' is not necessarily ferocious.

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.

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

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 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.

I'm going to name my daughter Emily.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 think I've had extremes of being unable to exist outside of my own head, and then I only am existing for other people... There's a middle ground where I should take care of myself and other people.

It's weird to get asked questions that I don't know the answers to... But I like getting questions I don't know the answer to because maybe it's the first time I've been asked to articulate these things.

I've been journaling longer than I've been a musician, longer than I've been an artist, longer than I've been a writer in general.

I think a lot about my obsessive need to document things and what it's going to mean in the future.

From the very beginning, I had a lot of female role models in music. I would go to shows, and there were always women fronting bands and playing guitar or backing up and playing drums or bass in a band. That probably contributed to my belief in myself to go out and perform for people.

There have been a couple specific instances where I've felt like I couldn't survive without interacting with a certain person. I've been involved with some pretty manipulative people who have told me the same thought: that I can't live without them.

Really unfiltered personal writing is cool to me. I'm like, 'How did you show that to everyone?'

It's one thing to make something, and then it's another thing to put it in front of other people.

We were so limited on time for 'No Burden' that we didn't get to overthink anything. There was no going for the perfect take, or even going for three takes. It was kind of nice because what you're hearing is our first impulse.

Whenever I'm trying to understand people that I don't understand, or things in people or even in myself, I'll say, 'When did this negativity get here?' I try to think back to how I was raised to deal with things, and then consider how the person that I'm dealing with grew up.