ROSTAM BATMANGLIJ

Well, the announcement to say that I was no longer a member of Vampire Weekend was something that was in the works for a long time. I knew that it was the right choice for me.

I'd like to make an album with Slack one day. I'd like to use it as a collaborative tool. I know about it because I have friends that work in tech, and I guess you can use it in any job.

On the song 'Step,' the chorus is Ezra is singing into my laptop with the laptop microphone, and you can hear the trains going by my apartment, but we liked the quality of that recording.

The original 'Don't Let It Get to You' started with a beat. The drums came first. All the musical and lyrical elements were written over those drums.

In some ways, the more that I write songs, the more I feel that telling a story is the most important thing; just being able to close your eyes when you hear some lyrics and go somewhere.

What I love is the openness of collaboration.

Films should involve a director's idiosyncrasies as much as possible I think.

I don't believe in expertise. I don't believe that a film critic feels a film more deeply than any person who walks into a theater. I don't believe that.

Classical music can be catchy, so can African instrumental guitar music. It's not just pop songs that are catchy. Rhythms can be catchy, too.

I thought it would be interesting to play classical music on rock instruments.

Whenever I work on a project I put all of myself into it.

Honestly, I never felt like I wasn't an artist on my own. I always felt like the music I made was mine, whether it was part of a collaboration with people.

I never identified with 'indie,' I don't like that word.

When I work with other artists, I really want to bring out the most in their voices and I want to hold myself to the same standard.

I certainly think that my music is a response to my experience as a person who doesn't identify as straight, as a person who grew up American.

I think that's kind of the perfect mix, where you do something that you're not sure about, you feel like you're taking a risk, and then you turn around and look at the artists that you're collaborating with and you can read the expression on their face if they like it or they hate it.

It doesn't matter if you record with a microphone on a laptop or at a friend's house. Now it's more of a danger of things sounding too high-fi than sounding too low-fi.

I think that's the only way I know how to write songs, is to think about my life, and also to think about the words at the same time.

Yeah, I'd always wanted to do a song with finger-picked, nylon-string guitar.

A lot of what being a producer is, is giving people space. Like psychologically being there to help them realize what they're trying to do.

You want the personality of each performer - whether it's singing or bass or drums or piano - to be intact. In some ways it's much more challenging to preserve that and to also make music that sounds modern.

I feel like there's no one kind of person who comes to my shows. Sometimes I've been surprised by the people who will stop me on the street to tell me that they're into my music.

I'm not interested in anyone who would want me for the wrong reasons.

It's hard to make music that's sexy that's not cheesy.

There are songs out there in the world which, in some ways, seem so unmusical.