Songwriters on Process

Laura Stevenson returns to the pod! This was an easy decision to have her on again (the first time was 2011) because I love her music and she's one of the funniest songwriters I've ever interviewed.I don't know how Stevenson has time to make music. We might imagine artists creating their art free of life's responsibilities, but Stevenson has responsibilities and then some: she's a mother, she's a music therapist, and she's getting her graduate degree. (She took Zoom calls with her thesis advisor in the car outside the studio while making this album.) Any one of these activities could derail the other the other three, so I left this podcast in awe.Stevenson's latest album is Late Great on Really Records.

Cautious Clay and I spent the first ten minutes of this episode talking about the role that painting plays in his creative process. Then a few minutes later, the topic turned to the through line between basketball and songwriting. And later he mentioned that planks and stretching are a part of his writing ritual. He also plays seven (at least) instruments: drums, bass, guitar, piano, sax, flute, and vocals. Cautious Clay is a true Renaissance Man--who was also sampled by Taylor Swift. His album The Hours: Morning is out on Concord Records.

This episode with Shura marks a first: we managed to draw a through line between Marcella Hazan's bolognese sauce and the songwriting process. We also talk about why peeing brings great ideas. (To be sure, Shura is not the first songwriter to tell me that.) Lest you think her inspiration is confined to those indoor pastimes, Shura told me that few things beat a hike in the mountains. This was one fun conversation!Shura's latest album I Got Too Sad For My Friends is out now on Play It Again Sam.

"The more I do this, the less I want to understand where it comes from," Orla Gartland says on the pod. Like most songwriters, Gartland likes to walk as a part of her songwriting process. She'll usually listen to music on these walks, and she walks to the tempo of the music she's listening to. So if you see her on the streets of London walking briskly one day and slowly the next, you now know why.Gartland's latest album Everybody Needs a Hero is out now.

It's the return of Nick Kivlen and Julia Cumming of Sunflower Bean! We had so much fun in 2022 that we had to do it again. Kivlen says, "One of things I'm realizing as Julia I talk is that our processes are totally different." And as you'll hear, differences can actually streamline the process.Sunflower Bean's latest album Mortal Primetime is out now on Lucky Number Records.

"Without the labor, channeling can't happen," Matt Gervais of The Head and the Heart told me. He has stacks upon stacks of Mead notebooks to prove it, all the way back to when he was a kid. Gervais finds art galleries to be particularly inspiring; they were a rich source when he worked in the Seattle Art MuseumThe latest album by The Head and the Heart is Aperture, out now.

When a band has seven GRAMMY wins and thirty-one GRAMMY nominations among them, they're a supergroup. So let's be clear: I'm With Her is a supergroup. The trio of Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O'Donovan, and Sara Watkins are close friends who say that great songs can come from a good trip to the grocery store. I've had all three on the pod before, but never together.The latest album by I'm With Her is Wild and Clear Blue on Rounder Records.NOTE: here are my past interviews with Jarosz, O'Donovan, and Watkins.

"I need to have those times of being fully in bloom, then fully hibernating. That's how I get my best, most genuine work," Samantha Crain says. She's a seasonal songwriter who actively takes time not to write, and those times are the hibernation stages. Some of Crain's songs hibernate too: the title track off her new album took twenty years to write.Crain's writing process is like a wide-angle lens. She likes to write at the dining room table in a chair that gives her a view of the entire room. "It feels like an unplanned mood board if I need a starting point, with lots of stuff in my periphery," Crain says. That mood board produced one of my favorite albums of the year. I first discovered Samantha Crain's music on Reservation Dogs, one of the best shows on television ever. (I've also interviewed Deerlady, a phenomenal band whose music is also on the show.) Crain's latest album is Gumshoe on Real Kind Records.

ED NOTE: here's my episode with Hood's bandmate Ashton Irwin.It's about time a songwriter referenced the movie Lost in Translation, as 5 Seconds of Summer bassist Calum Hood did in our conversation. It's part of Hood's process: he finds inspiration everywhere. And he likes to create every day, but that doesn't always happen. "I'm an anxious person anyway, so if I go a few days without writing, I start to wonder what's going on," Hood says. "That's when I practice mindfulness." Calum Hood's debut solo album is ORDER chaos ORDER on Capitol Records.

Suzanne Vega usually heads straight to the compost heap for song ideas. "I have a compost heap of at least 50 notebooks dating back many years, and I pull from those notebooks when writing a new album," Vega says. She starts the process with a theme in mind then heads straight to that pile of notebooks to look for ideas to fit the theme. Some of her songs take years to emerge: "Lucinda" started as an idea more than 25 years ago. It's a pretty rich compost heap that can produce "Tom's Diner" and "Luka." Vega wrote "Tom's Diner" on a walk after leaving the diner, further proof of how movement improves the creative process. She's also a voracious reader and cites James Joyce as a big influence.Suzanne Vega's latest album is Flying With Angels on Cooking Vinyl Records.

"I assign too much personal value to my creative output. Too much of my self-worth is wrapped up in that process in a way that is unhealthy," Stefan Babcock of PUP told me. It's natural for an artist to attach self-worth to what they create, but Babcock says he's working on loosening that attachment. "Trying to write and not have every song be everything has been a big weight off my shoulders," he says.PUP's latest album is Who Will Look After the Dogs?

It's not easy being a songwriter. It's also not easy being a PhD student. I don't know how Uwade is able to do both simultaneously. Uwade is in the first year of her PhD program in Classics at Stanford University, and in this episode we explore how these two lives intersect. We also go deep into her songwriting process, which must involve a .38mm Muji black ink pen. It has to be black ink because "blue is too whimsical. Black ink is me telling myself, You have get real. No more fun and games. Black ink is a declaration, whereas blue ink is for play," Uwade told me.If you're a Fleet Foxes fan, you've heard Uwade's voice on their album Shore and may have seen her open for the band. Her new and insanely good album Florilegium is out now on Thirty Tigers. 

Ed note: my new permanent intro and outro music is, in fact, the Tennis song "Need Your Love."Alaina Moore and Pat Riley of Tennis are good friends of mine, which means this episode is more of a conversation than an interview as we go deep into the creative process. The band's website features Alaina surrounded by books, and this is hardly a surprise: they are voracious, and I do mean voracious, readers. We're always texting each other about the latest books we've read. Our latest obsession, as you'll hear, is Jennifer Egan.The new album by Tennis is Face Down in the Garden. And while it may be their last, I'm excited for what the future holds for Alaina and Pat.

“Scribbling into oblivion” is how Lili Trifilio of Beach Bunny describes her editing process. (It's also an amazing song title.) She used this phrase in response to a question I like to ask songwriters: when you're editing something you don't like, do you cross it out with a single line or scratch it out? Trifilio wants that word or phrase to disappear forever. Beach Bunny's latest album is Tunnel Vision.

ED NOTE: Here's my recent episode with Benmont Tench, keyboardist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Mike Campbell doesn't have songwriting rules. He doesn't need any because he's always creating. "I'm probably writing as I'm talking to you," Campbell told me. In fact, Campbell's problem is that he can't stop coming up with ideas and sometimes wishes he could dial it back a bit. But that's what happens when you keep a guitar next to every chair in your house. Not just in every room, but next to every chair. Besides his work as Tom Petty's guitarist and collaborator/co-writer in The Heartbreakers, Mike Campbell has worked with countless others. He co-wrote "The Boys of Summer" and "The Heart of the Matter" by Don Henley, and he's worked with Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, George Harrison, Aretha Franklin, to name a few. After Tom Petty's passing, Campbell formed The Dirty Knobs. Their latest album Vagabonds, Virgins, & Misfits is out now. Campbell has a terrific new memoir out, Heartbreaker, co-written with Ari Surdoval (their editor, Ben Schafer, was also my editor at Hachette Books for my book Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir by Mark Morton with Ben Opipari.) 

I always love having my buddy Derek Miller of Sleigh Bells on the pod! This is Miller's third time as a guest. I don't know how he ever has time to do interviews because the man is either writing music, about to write music, or thinking about why he's not writing music. Miller is inspired by everything, and I mean everything. Even LSU football. (Go Dawgs, sorry Derek!)We also talk about his newfound sobriety and how bands like R.E.M, the B-52s, and The Cars influence his music.The latest album by Sleigh Bells (Miller and Alexis Krauss) is Bunky Becky Birthday Boy, out now on Mom + Pop Music.*photo by David Perez

Running and poetry are all Denison Witmer needs as a songwriter."When I'm being physically active, my brain opens up," he says. Running is a big part of Witmer's life and plays a big role in his creative process. The other major source of Witmer's inspiration is poetry, and we talk about its impact on his songwriting. We also make a collective case for why the poet Li-Young Lee is so, so, so great and why you should read him right after you listen to this episode. Denison Witmer's new album Anything At All  (produced and recorded by Sufjan Stevens) is out now on Asthmatic Kitty Records. 

I'm a much better songwriter when I'm reading," Annie DiRusso says. Truer words have never been spoken; a clear through line connects quality songwriting and reading. And the fact that DiRusso loves poetry makes me even more of a fan. DiRusso does most of her songwriting in her "giant mess" of a bed. "It's covered in guitars, notebooks, pens, a laptop, mics. There's ink stains all over the sheets too," she says on the pod. DiRusso's new album Super Pedestrian is out now

Running and poetry are all Denison Witmer needs as a songwriter."When I'm being physically active, my brain opens up," he says. Running is a big part of Witmer's life and plays a big role in his creative process. The other major source of Witmer's inspiration is poetry, and we talk about its impact on his songwriting. We also make a collective case for why the poet Li-Young Lee is so, so, so great and why you should read him right after you listen to this episode. Denison Witmer's new album Anything At All  (produced and recorded by Sufjan Stevens) is out now on Asthmatic Kitty Records. Send us a text

Benmont Tench is the keyboardist and a founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. That's reason enough to listen to this podcast. I've interviewed other icons—Duff McKagan, Johnny Marr, and Jerry Harrison, to name a few—and they all have one common thread: a voracious appetite for art in all its forms. They consume books, movies, paintings, poetry, sculptures, you name it. Artists with longevity know that to create art, you have to constantly consume it.Tench is no exception. “The more I read, the more chance I have to get inspired because I'm opening myself up to language. But I'm inspired by all art; I'm even inspired by looking out the window. It all comes in, and it all shows up in my writing,” he says.  When I asked Tench if he favors any certain medium, his response was simple: “From Milton to Milton Bradley.” He's also the first songwriter I've interviewed to cite both Manet and the Steve Martin movie Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid as inspiration.Tench's solo album The Melancholy Season is out now. Send us a text

"I have no rituals when it comes to writing. I don't want to think something can go wrong if things aren't set up the right way," says James McGovern of The Murder Capital. Indeed, that's the downside of a ritual: a fixed routine can limit your productivity when that routine isn't available. But McGovern does have one tiny "ritual" that I wholeheartedly endorse: writing the bad stuff before he gets to the good stuff.And as an aside, any songwriter who references Yeats, Keats, and Heaney in one podcast is forever my hero.The Murder Capital's latest album is BlindnessSend us a text

“My biggest hurdle as a writer is trying to hack my brain to become less critical,” Christian Lee Hutson says. In other words, Hutson wants to get the hell out of his own way when he writes. I've heard this before from other songwriters: Matt Nathanson has a name for that annoyingly critical voice in his head that he's always trying to silence: "the assassin."Hutson and I talked at length about the process of discovery through mistakes. You can't write the good stuff if you're afraid of writing the bad stuff. Getting better as a writer is all about surprising yourself, and you can't do that if you're too self-critical as you write. Christian Lee Hutson's latest album Paradise Pop. 10 is out now. Send us a text

Eli Hewson of Inhaler usually stays up and writes all night. Come morning, he heads to bed and will sometimes pass his father Bono (yes, that Bono), who is just beginning his day and starting to write. (All of the band members live with their parents.) Hewson's admittedly "terrible sleeping habits" are nothing new; when he was five years old, his mother often found him watching tv in the middle of the night. Hewson's bandmate Josh Jenkinson wants no part of those late night writing sessions. "I just go to bed," he says. Jenkinson is a daytime writer; like Hewson, he's most productive when no one else is around. And in his case, that's when his mother is at work and the house is quiet. Aside from that difference, Hewson and Jenkinson mostly see eye-to-eye on the writing process. Both extol the benefits of the Rubik's Cube, of all things, on songwriting. Jenkinson says that the problem solving "becomes so mechanical that I can think about other things while I'm doing it." And both lament the "erosion of boredom" and how its loss impacts our ability to create.Inhaler's latest album Open Wide is out now.Send us a text

Send us a textEd Note: Here's my 2013 interview with Leithauser and my 2022 interview with his bandmate Walter Martin from The Walkmen.Hamilton Leithauser keeps regular hours. And those hours can be early: on the day we talked, he had started writing at 5am. It's a problem if he doesn't write every day, he says. "If I don't write every day, I feel anxious or like I've done something wrong."I don't think Leithauser ever rests. "I can't ever stop doing stuff," he says, saying that it may border on "maniacal." So when he's not writing, his other hobbies include, but are probably not limited to, woodworking, photography, racquetball, kitesurfing, and chess. (Even when he's playing chess, he admits to writing music.) Oh, and he has two young kids.Leithauser's new solo album This Side of the Island is out March 7 on Glassnote Records.

Send us a textIf you see Cecilia Castleman browsing the paint aisle at Home Depot, she's probably not looking for paint. She's looking for song ideas. Castleman finds inspiration everywhere, but paint names, she says, are particularly rich sources for song ideas and lyrics. And as you'll hear, baking cakes and looking at old houses are great sources too. It took me about ten seconds—the first notes of the opening guitar riff—of listening to the opening track “It's Alright” to realize I was going nowhere for the next 48 minutes. This album is good. I mean really, really good. Cecilia Castleman's self-titled debut is out on Glassnote Records.

Send us a textRebecca and Megan Lovell, the GRAMMY-winning sisters who compose Larkin Poe, call themselves “serial idea keepers.” This means they don't write every day. Instead, “we pull back on ideas until we are ready to write,” they say. This seasonal writing, as they and other songwriters like to call it, requires discipline: you have to resist the urge to write every day and only write during certain times. The advantage of this is that the words flow freely when it's time to write.But the Lovells bemoan this age of constant online stimulation, where artists are missing one critical element for creativity: boredom. “There's not enough boredom in our lives. We need time to daydream,” they say.Larkin Poe's latest album is called Bloom.Ed note: to clarify my intro, Larkin Poe won the 2024 GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Blues Album for their 2023 album Blood Harmony.

Send us a textFlipturn's Tristan Duncan (guitar), Devon VonBalson (drums), and Dillon Basse (vocals) join the pod and go deep into their creative processes. We talk about, among other things, why certain times of day are better for writing, how exercise improves songwriting, and the places they find the most inspiring.Flipturn's latest album Burnout Days is out January 24 on Dualtone Records.

Send us a textIs Vera, the debut album by Phil and Tim Hanesroth (The Hanesroth Twins), really a debut? After all, they've won three GRAMMYs and have been nominated seven more times for their songwriting collaboration with Brandi Carlile. (They're the twins who flank her in concert live.) The twins' songs have been covered by Adele, Dolly Parton, and the Avett Brothers. So while this may be their first album as a duo, they've had excellent songwriting chops for a while.Had a great time talking about why it's important to not take the writing process too seriously, why the outdoors are so integral to creativity, and their uncanny ability to craft fully formed songs in their head before committing them to paper. 

Send us a textThe last time I interviewed Josh Carter of Phantogram was in 2010, before this site was even a podcast. It was one of the first interviews I ever did, and Carter mentioned the author Breece D'J Pancake. The name stood out, of course, but it took a while for me to read about Pancake's tragic backstory. Then more songwriters started mentioning him in interviews, so I finally read his book, and wow. Incredible. This time, Carter and Sarah Barthel join me on the podcast to talk about their decidedly old-school writing process. We talk about Barthel's collection of analog typewriters, Carter's use of his Dictaphone, and how we just need more time to be bored. Yes, we sound like three cranky old people railing against the impact tech has on creativity. But I'll take that any day as long as Phantogram continues to make such good music. Phantogram's latest album Memory of a Day is out now.

Send us a textWhenever Sophie Allison (aka Soccer Mommy) puts something out, I know I'll like it. Her new album Evergreen is no exception. We take a deep dive into her songwriting process on this episode.

Send us a textEd note: Here's my 2022 podcast episode with Fontaines D.C. singer Grian Chatten.  Unfortunately, I stopped recording before Conor Deegan (Deego) and I started reading poetry to each other. But that should give you a sense of how deep I went into the creative process with the Fontaines D.C. bassist. This is less a discussion about the particulars of the songwriting process than it is about the creative mind and the drive to write. And yet, even our discussion of why Deego likes to write with a pencil was a window to his soul. Of course, we also talked literature, from Blake to Baudelaire to Hemingway. Fontaines D.C. is my favorite band today. Their latest album is called Romance.

Send us a textHello Mary on the pod today! Stella Wave, Helena Straight, and Mikaela Oppenheimer released their debut album in 2020, when Wave was 19 and Oppenheimer and Straight were 16. The band talks about their collective and individual writing processes, and we also discussed our shared love for the novelist Jennifer Egan.Hello Mary's latest album Emita Ox is out now on Frenchkiss Records. 

Send us a text"Bravery is underrated when it comes to art," Mike Einziger, guitarist and songwriter for Incbus, told me. In other words, don't be afraid to write the bad stuff. (I'd listen to a guy whose band has sold 23 million records.) As you'll hear on this episode, Einziger's intellectual curiosity runs deep, expanding far beyond music into the world of physics; the overlap of these two passions, he told me, means that he is constantly "driven by curiosity. And when that happens, songwriting doesn't feel like work."

Send us a textHere's a sampling of the authors and artists that Jake Duzsik of HEALTH mentioned in our conversation: Pascal, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Truman Capote, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Pynchon, Camus, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy. And somewhere along the lines, we discussed postmodern prose. To be clear, Duzsik was not name checking. It reflects how deeply his creative mind operates. HEALTH's latest album Rat Wars is out now. And shameless plug: if you're a fan of HEALTH, you might also be a Lamb of God fan. So buy Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir by Mark Morton with Ben Opipari (me)!

Send us a textDoes writer's block really exist? Or is it just a reluctance to write the bad stuff? The writer Anthony Doerr once told me that writer's block is just "a failure of courage." Pete Yorn tends to agree. On this episode of the podcast, Yorn and I talk about the myth of writer's block, why you should always say yes to a creative project with your kids, and why he still keeps his songwriting notebooks from his days as a college student at Syracuse University. Pete Yorn's latest album, his tenth solo studio album, The Hard Way, is out now.

Wunderhorse is why you should always get to the show early to see the support act. I was introduced to Jacob Slater's band when I saw them open for Fontaines D.C. (here's my podcast with Grian Chatten of Fontaines) at a small club in Pittsburgh in 2022. I had never heard of Wunderhorse, but they won everyone, including me, over in the first thirty seconds with their volume and their energy. I've been a huge fan of Slater and his band ever since. And as you'll hear, we share a strong affinity for the amazing writer Breece D'J Pancake.Wunderhorse's fantastic album Midas is out now. 

It's always fun to interview two songwriters who have a history together! Before his solo career, Kishi Bashi was a member of Kevin Barnes' band of Montreal. Kishi Bashi's new album Kantos is out now on Joyful Noise Recordings, and of Montreal's Lady on the Cusp is out on Polyvinyl Records. Kishi Bashi's “Omoiyari: A Song Film” has been nominated for an Emmy with the winners announced in September. 

Mica Tenenbaum and Matt Lewin of Magdalena Bay love hybrid cars. While I'm sure they appreciate the environmental benefits, it's the humming sound the cars make that the duo finds inspiring. In fact, they find inspiration in everything around them, visually and sonically—even the act of Swiffering, as you'll hear on the podcast. Small surprise that Tenenbaum had 2002 voice memos of ideas on her phone when we spoke.  Magdalena Bay's new album Imaginal Disk is out on Mom + Pop Records.  The band's videos are incredible, so check those out too. 

"I'm always writing and always creating. I relate to the world by writing," Eva Hendricks of Charly Bliss told me on the podcast. Besides songwriting, she's written a YA novel and is a big journaler. Heck, Hendricks even gets inspired while she's hanging laundry! And when those songs are close to fruition, they need to be perfect: Hendricks estimates that she wrote 50 different verses for the new song "Waiting For You."The new Charly Bliss album Forever is out on Lucky Number Records.

Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura has a superpower: she's able to write entire songs in her head before putting them to paper. If Campbell gets an idea and can't write it down immediately, she'll repeat the words over and over to herself until she can grab a pen and pencil. This superpower comes in handy when driving is an especially rich source of inspiration, as it is for Campbell. Camera Obscura's latest album Look to the East, Look to the West is out now on Merge Records.

Matthew Koma of Winnetka Bowling League stops by the podcast to talk about how writing a song is like solving a crossword puzzle, why he doesn't like to dig through discarded melodic and lyrical ideas for new songs, and how he gets inspired by being among the stores.Winnetka Bowling League's debut album Sha La La is out now. I'm a big fan. 

Ashton Irwin, drummer for 5 Seconds of Summer, often writes songs out of necessity. While he likes to journal, Irwin finds songwriting a much more effective vehicle for maintaining his mental health. And there's a routine to the songwriting process: from 11a-3p when the caffeine is at its peak, with a Moleskin journal and a black ink pen. Irwin likes to write lyrics during the day; the songs he writes at night are different. "I'm less concerned with being tricky with the wordplay," he explains. "The songs I write at night are more beat driven and animalistic, conjuring the energies of the night."Irwin's latest solo album, his second, is called Blood on the Drums.

ED NOTE: This is from 2021, before this was a podcast and I was posting the video interviews to YouTube. I've taken the audio from that interview and turned it into podcast form. As you can tell at the beginning, we did this in the middle of the pandemic, hence our discussion about the creative process during COVID.Mike Doughty believes that discipline is a necessary part of the songwriting process. Doughty made his name as the founder of Soul Coughing, but he's had a prolific career as a solo singer/songwriter.  “I believe in discipline and the idea of working every day. I do like to look back at the end of the day with a sense of accomplishment.”  That feeling of accomplishment comes after some consistent journaling each morning and evening. It's decidedly vintage: he uses an IBM Electric typewriter in the morning (“The blank white page is filled with light and hope) and a 1983 Apple IIe computer at night (“The glowing green has a definite night vibe.”). And he saves those evening journal entries on a five inch floppy disk.

The circle is complete. I've had recent interviews with Anais Mitchell (together with Charlotte Cornfield) and with Eric D. Johnson, but now that we've added Josh Kaufman, this is a full-on Bonny Light Horseman episode. I enjoyed this conversation immensely because we dove into their collective process, not just their individual processes. And listening to them talk for even a few seconds makes one thing immediately clear: the songwriting is great because the chemistry among them is so powerful. Bonny Light Horseman's new double album Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free is out now on Jagjaguwar Records. 

All four members of DIIV (Zachary Cole Smith, Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield, Ben Newman) joined me to talk about their individual songwriting processes. This interview could've gone on forever because they are so passionate about creativity. What's interesting is that their individual songwriting processes don't have too much in common, but perhaps how those differences play off each other is why they make such good music. DIIV's new album Frog in Boiling Water is out now on Fantasy Records. 

Does the mind of Eric Earley from Blitzen Trapper ever rest? I think not.  After all, he told me that he liked to solve math problems in college while he was making breakfast. Earley is a voracious reader who just finished his self-proclaimed "Time of the Tomes," in which he read nothing but, well, tomes. (The longer, the better. Infinite Jest? Please. Kid's stuff).Earley has a family and his other occupation involves working with the homeless population in Portland, so he's not quite as active as he used to be. But that's only because he doesn't have as much time, although now he's quite invested in meditation and dream journals. And songwriting, of course. This is the second time I've interviewed Earley; the first was in 2018, when he told me that he'd written five unpublished novels "just for fun." Earley is also responsible for turning me on to the great short story writer Breece D'J Pancake. Blitzen Trapper's latest album 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions is out now on Yep Roc Records. 

Deerlady is Mali Obomsawin and Magdalena Abrego, and their debut album Greatest Hits  is my favorite album of the year, and this is also one of my favorite interviews because we had so much fun. I first heard Deerlady while listening to my old college radio station, WTHS at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. They played "Bounty," and it was one of those moments when you hear a song for the first time, stop whatever it is that you're doing, love it immediately, then listen to the entire album. The backstory to Greatest Hits is fascinating. Obomsawin is a citizen of Odanak First Nation. She's a Berkelee-trained composer and bassist who leads the Mali Obomsawin Sextet, a jazz group. Abrego , a composer and guitarist, started at Berkelee before finishing at New England Conservatory, where she's on the faculty.  These are not, as you can tell, rock gigs. And that's why Obomsawin and Abrego love Deerlady: it's an unveiling! Greatest Hits is full of incredible guitar work and stunning vocals. Obomsawin told Stereogum, "It feels great to be in a rock band, like that's my natural state," while Abrego says that the band "feels like an unmasking." I'm loathe to categorize music, but others have called their music shoegaze, goth, slowcore. Whatever. I just love this album.

Aaron Lee Tasjan has a pretty simple writing process: he gets up around 8am, has a glass of water, and pets his cat. Then he writes. But not every day. "I only write when my body tells me to, when I can go off yesterday's fumes," he told me. And in one of the best rituals I've ever heard, Tasjan always writes with a pencil--but never uses the eraser. "I hate erasers," he says.Tasjan lives in Nashville, where the Frist Art Museum serves as a tremendous source of inspiration for his songs. His new album Stellar Evolution is out now on Blue Elan Records.

Jane Penny, co-founder of  TOPS,  makes her solo debut with her fantastic EP Surfacing, out now on Luminelle Recordings.  Penny stops by the podcast to talk about how Barry White has influenced her songwriting; why she has to write her lyrics in cursive; and why when you see her in the audience at a show and she's looking at her phone, she's actually deeply engaged in the creative process. She promises!I'm a big fan of TOPS, so this was a lot of of fun. 

On this episode of the podcast, Grace Cummings talks about why her phone has been such a drain on her creativity and why she's making a conscious effort to stay away from it. But sometimes that phone can be pretty useful. For one, it allows Cummings to create her alter ego Cheryl. (You'll understand once you listen.) And it also allows her to create a fantastic filing system for her song ideas with labels like "excellent" and "very excellent" that we both agreed are pretty good mini pep-talks.  Cummings's new album Ramona is out April 5 on ATO Records.

Will Taylor and Charlie Martin of Hovvdy take a deep dive into their songwriting processes on the podcast. We delve into, among other things, the nuts and bolts of the revision process and whether distance is important when writing about an event.Hovvdy's new (double!) album Hovvdy is out April 26 on Arts & Crafts Records.