Quotes from Caroline Polachek

Before I play a show, I put on lavender oil - it's sort of a ritual.

As soon as we wrote the beat for 'Romeo,' I knew it was a running song. I was thinking about it in terms of the body. What do you want to do? It's not a song you want to dance to.

'Ashes Of Love' has much more hot-blooded vocal than what PC Music is known for, and a much harder production than what I usually do, so I was fully prepared for people to hate it.

One of the goals we had when making 'Moth' was to have the vocals sound less treated and less processed than we'd ever had before, to just let them be exposed and very audible.

I guess this song isn't about anything necessarily sad, but it makes me sad just because it makes me think about how inaccessible the past is, but it's called 'Boy Child' by Scott Walker.

Low' was probably the album that influenced me more than any other, because of how it combined humor and impressive, glamorous, driving energy with this totally surreal soundscape production.

I remember thinking that writing love songs was stupid and cliche, and that my job was to not write love songs, because there are enough of them.

My first concert was Third Eye Blind.

But synthesizer music has been accepted as emotional for long enough that it isn't a huge reach, conceptually, to think of a fake voice as 'emotional', especially since there's a human composing it.

But I wanted the karaoke-style lyrics in our music videos for two reasons: first, cause nobody has lyric booklets anymore, and when I was growing up, lyric booklets were like little bibles. I want people to be able to access our lyrics without having to go to some gnarly website with banner ads.

I think that's a big trope in pop music: the blaze-of-glory breakup. It's not one that I particularly identify with, but it's definitely possible.

I really like when the lyrics in the music have an interesting relationship between one another - where they contrast each other.

We are always in a state of flux, and taking risks is important.

Well working by yourself, especially when no one knows about it, is totally liberating because it's very impulse-driven. You work when you want to work. You work when you can work. No deadlines. No conversation. No compromise. No help.

I guess I've gotten older and more sentimental, and I've realized that the love song is just the modern equivalent of a devotional.

Yes, when I come up with ideas on my own, it's almost always a melody, just as often an instrument or bassline as it is a vocal. But it is a single, linear, monophonic thing. Something you could hum or whistle.

If you want to know what the DJ is playing, just ask. You don't have the right to stick your head in front of my screen as if you're an expert leaning over the shoulder of the apprentice.

I have an opera coach who I went to as a teenager, when I was 15 and 16 years old. When I went to college, I forgot about it.

The men's dance style in dancehall is territorial, but it's also flirtatious and it's also showing off strength by way of smooth movement that you can only do if you're really strong. It has so much attitude.

Success will come. Or it won't. But I think you can only make a go at it in a big way by fully being yourself and taking risks. People can feel risks.

Music feels so environmental to me, especially the process of working with synths or mixing. I started thinking about music as a psychological landscape as well. It's a landscape of the mind.

With each project I'm always pushing for clarity.

So, anyway, I think the format of love songs for me stopped becoming about people and started becoming about life.

I was actually really stunned that my label suggested 'Door' as the single to lead with, as it's such a long and winding song.