NATALIE PRASS

It is like an addiction: I get addicted to performing and touring. I get itchy and think, 'I've got to do this.'

I'm not really a trend person.

My kind of retro-sounding songs, or whatever you want to call them, aren't for everybody.

I'm a very loyal and compassionate person.

I don't think I'm the most talented musician or the best singer, but I work really, really hard.

If you want to be a songwriter, you've got to obsess over it.

I got offered publishing deals to write country music, but it was not what I wanted to do.

When you're that age - that middle-school age, early high school - you're changing. You're going crazy. So I put all of my energy into pretending I was someone else, battling and screaming and all that stuff - casting spells and getting into a whole fantasy world. It was really healthy for me.

Like Lenny Kravitz, I wanna make the world a better place; I wanna unify people.

I blindly loved music and never once questioned if I was weird or not. I didn't care. Still don't!

I'm a real musician's musician: I get really geeky on chords and arrangements.

After graduating college in 2010, I got to work - writing and co-writing all the time, playing and touring in bands, playing for other people's bands, working in coffee shops all over town.

I'm such an emotional person that when it comes to songwriting, I can click into whatever zone I need.

I'm pretty picky about what I do and who I work with, for better or for worse.

When I made dog sweaters, as goofy as that was, I made this product, and people could buy it, and I got money immediately. Music was just this ethereal land of maybe, a lot of waiting and waiting. You live your life around hoping you get a five-thousand-dollar royalty check that usually doesn't come.

I love wearing dresses, but more simplistic, classic-looking dresses.

I'm definitely someone who's really picky about who I work with and how I want things to go, because I have a high standard of integrity for my music. I want it to be genuine.

Music is all I've ever done.

Audrey Hepburn is a huge influence on my style. She's classy, confident, and simplistic. She's a tomboy and also super feminine.

Women are against women, and men are against women. Like, women have to rise above so much to get ahead. I feel guilty that sometimes I hate being a woman. I hate it because there's so much weight on your shoulders at all times. Maybe I'm just really sensitive.

I'm really into the 'classic' thing - the craft of writing something that will last, that won't die by next year.

Growing up, I had a natural love for women like Diana Ross, Mary Wells, Ella Fitzgerald. Then I got into Dionne Warwick, Nina Simone, and Patsy Cline.

I want to talk about things that are actually important.

Stevie Wonder is obviously the master at political music that's for everybody, that's still joyful.

I do always write from a personal place.