I played in orchestras all through high school and taught myself how to play guitar.

New York is so strange. Every time I'm there, I very rarely see someone who's dressed cool.

Something really intense happened to me during the 'SNL' performance. It felt like the person I was made to be faced the person I'm becoming. It was the first time I felt like I was able to make any sense of ownership of my work.

I think so many of the themes from the natural world mimic emotional themes in our lives.

'Alaska' was filmed at my family's farm in Maryland; 'Dog Years' was filmed at the summer camp I grew up going to in Maine.

Writer's block is your self-critic getting in the way, because creativity will just flow otherwise.

Folk music usually romanticises the road. 'Back in my Body' tells the opposite story.

I've always been a very visual creator. I make mood boards or sit with coloured pencils and scribble and try and figure out what I'm trying to work through musically.

I just didn't really know who I was, so I didn't really know what I sounded like. And so I did a lot of writing, and I studied abroad, and I fell in love, and, like... I got to be like any other college student.

I want to have a long career. But that's based on wanting people to buy into my voice and not into a fabricated image.

Part of success is having a good story, and as a journalist, I totally understand. But it meant that my many, many years of focus and hard work got kind of prepackaged into a Cinderella story. I'm super grateful that it happened, but it left me feeling like I never got to be a full human in the experience.

Graduating from college and starting your life as an adult is a giant transition no matter what.

It's been really fun to see what happens to my body when I don't have an instrument attached to it.

The main rhythmic loop in 'Alaska' is me just patting on my jeans.

I find, as a woman and as a producer, I spend a lot of time convincing people I actually did the work.

I grew up in a really rural area in Maryland.

I spent my whole life in Maryland, but I wanted to experience more - fighting to get to urban areas where there was culture.

I feel really held in being vulnerable. That's always been the kind of music that I've gravitated to as well, but to feel really supported by my audience in that is a real privilege.

When I write songs, it happens very quickly, sometimes 10 to 15 minutes, and I draw inspiration from everything.

The thing about fans is you don't get to choose your own. But every time I meet a fan, I'm like, wow, we would totally be at the same house party.

I do play a lot of instruments. I started with the harp when I was young and then sort of moved to guitar and piano.

Friends came on the road, came on tour, came in my music videos; I got in the studio with them. I'm a really loyal person, and I don't have a really large group of friends, but the people I hang out with I really, really care about, and they continue to be a part of my life.

You need music that is compelling and intellectual, but you also need music that just feels good and you can laugh about and dance to, and I think I'm trying to marry the two in some way.

I spend a lot of time reading and try to make sure that I can get a little bit of alone time every day.

That's why people come to live music, right? To see something go wrong, something human, something vulnerable.

Ask me my influences, I always talk about Bjork and Beck because they're independent voices in the music industry.

Everybody thinks that touring is really glamourous, but I pretty much sit in a room all day. I have a sort of office where I do emails, and I go for a run, and then at the end of the night, I go to bed. It's not like some crazy party.

Ask about music growing up, I'll tell you I grew up playing classical music, and I didn't grow up in a musical household.

Lyrically, I've always thought about albums as a record of a period of time.

For me, it's important to ask what are you making, and what's the public's relationship to that. And I say public relationship because I don't really care so much about any sort of reception.

It's interesting because all I want to do is make music. I want to sit in my room, play the guitar, make beats, sing... And I have never made less music than when being a musician became my job.

When I'm joking around, I'll say I'm a pop star, because it's silly.

What I love more than anything in the entire world is making music. It's what I studied in school.

I'm a private person. I am quiet.

I've never made R&B. I've never made gospel. I've never made hip-hop - I don't think I'm going to, but I just want to keep challenging myself.

The craziest thing is I didn't know I could sing like this - ever. My voice has changed, or I've grown into it, woken up.

The reality is my career started with a song that wasn't finished and a video I didn't know was going on the Internet. It happened so out of my control.

I know some artists who write every day, and for a while, I felt really guilty that I didn't.

It took me two years to write 'Fallingwater,' but it's one of my favorite pieces I've ever made, and it was worth waiting for.

I only get compared to women, which is crazy because often the women they compare me to... we just have a similar hairstyle. Whether it's Joni Mitchell or Florence and the Machine - our music doesn't always sound anything alike. But we just all have long hair.

I didn't decide on what college I was going to go to until the day I had to.

I'm kind of a funny writer because I write very sporadically.

I love being outside.

Musicians have been political literally since people were writing songs.

I love pop music. It's just fun, and it feels good, and it's easy.

I've always wanted to play violin.

Bjork - she wears really weird stuff, and it's amazing.

I like songs that you can have both the physical release and an emotional release.

I reached a place where I wanted to make more music, but I didn't know what I wanted. So I stopped labeling music by genre and just got into a studio to be creative. Now I write whatever feels instinctive.

In terms of my voice, I'm very clear about who I am as a person and what I think.