I didn't actually start playing the banjo until I was in high school.
When I got to NYU, I had applied based on playing folk music, and they said, 'You're the banjo girl,' so I thought ,'OK, I'm the banjo girl.'
Ask me my influences, I always talk about Bjork and Beck because they're independent voices in the music industry.
The make-up and the costumes were me being scared. I needed to create a boundary between me and the audience. To project this bigger version of myself. Outwardly, it looked good, but inwardly, I began to feel horrible.
I listened to birds and crickets, looking for the ways that rhythm appears most naturally in the world. I listened to the Smithsonian's field recordings of pygmy choirs from Africa.
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'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'm a feminist, so it's just a really nice creative energy to work with a lot of women.
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.
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.
When you're super passionate about something, you're more willing to do all of the grunt work. You know, like, I'm so willing to live on a bus for my whole life because that means I get that one moment on stage or that one moment in the studio that totally fills me.
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.
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.
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.
The main rhythmic loop in 'Alaska' is me just patting on my jeans.
'Dog Years' is sort of my way of saying goodbye and 'see you soon' to my friends from college.
'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.
I spend a lot of time reading and try to make sure that I can get a little bit of alone time every day.
The reality of my life is it's about 25 percent music, and everything else I do is so I can get that 40 minutes later to go play. And it is unquestionably worth every second of it.
I spent my whole life in Maryland, but I wanted to experience more - fighting to get to urban areas where there was culture.
