I think of hip hop as a mass media, radio, MTV thing. It’s been extremely relevant over the last 10 years and rock music is just not anymore—-a tear ….

The Flaming Lips have been on Warner Bros. forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way, from the Cure to Ra….

What I miss [about church] is being forced to be in community with people that aren't the same as me..

The idea of dancing to bad house music is something I could never get behind..

I think there's some pretty amazing language in the Bible. The thing that's always been interesting to me about religion is that compared to the more….

A lot of artists write about the same things their whole career..

Whenever you do anything or say anything, you're opening yourself up to criticism. But that's okay..

I think filmmakers all secretly wanna be musicians and all musicians secretly wanna be filmmakers..

Being in a rock band, I feel a certain responsibility to have a weird haircut. I mean, who else gets to do that?.

Years ago, in order to stay sane, I had to really make an effort not to think about how people view us. There's just so much noise, positive and nega….

While there are so many beautiful Baroque churches and it's a beautiful artistic tradition, it almost gets hideous and grotesque if you push it furth….

Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, ….

There's this idea, particularly in pop music and a lot of these pop father/manager types, that you're selling the person instead of the song. You bas….

I studied scriptural interpretation, which is more about how people get meaning out of texts, looking at stuff in the Old Testament - Muslims, Christ….

If I was a cabinetmaker or a commercial fisherman, it would be the same question - how to connect to my world. The job we do affords us the opportuni….

It would get really alienating, to have my face be the face of a cause. So much just comes down to the songs. I just want to give us the opportunity ….

The film Black Orpheus is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil..

Major labels just lost their way. It's like the housing bubble. They lost a sense of the fundamentals..

Actual patriotism has to do with loving a place enough to try and improve it..

Songwriting is reliant on inspiration, which ideally you don't have that much control over. Songs kind of half make themselves, and then you have to ….

When I was younger, bands helped me connect to part of my humanity; bands that had nothing to do with anything political helped to form me. There's a….