Quotes from Weyes Blood

I always had a lot of empathy for the deep outcast weirdos in school. I was kind of like the more sociable weirdo, but I was always talking to the real weird ones.

I do sometimes feel like I function within an echo chamber and I'm just kind of preaching to the choir.

My mom was obsessed with Joni Mitchell; I grew up listening to so much of her music. But it was never a prerogative to emulate her.

My dad was a real working musician in the late '70s and early '80s. He had a band that was signed to Elektra/Asylum and they would perform at like Madame Wong's and Whiskey A Go Go all the time.

You know, around 14 or 15 I rebelled against Christianity pretty hardcore. I was reading a lot of other esoteric Eastern philosophy and getting into everything that wasn't dogmatic Christian. But I will say that it did kind of prime me for a more spiritual lifestyle. I didn't walk away with bitterness, even though there was some condemnation.

I'm always thinking about the bigger picture and always feeling so much for everybody else, and kind of experiencing the pain of the world, personally.

I'm a big fan of horror films, particularly 'Friday the 13th.' It's one of the only genres that weaves abstract experimental techniques into the mainstream; having to be spooky requires a little more creativity.

As a teenager, I really loved Catherine Ribeiro - extremely powerful, wild, improvisatory voice. I loved old psych-rock bands, and Michael Hurley, and Harry Nilsson. And then later on I discovered the famous European singer Demis Roussos, who used to be in Aphrodite's Child.

I think all human beings have a propensity to believe in things, and to have hope, and I think as a child especially you have a lot of hope and you believe in a lot of things, and your bedroom is a safe space and an imaginative space where you can escape and go off into wherever you want.

We haven't evolved as loners, we need each other. It's easy to believe in the illusion of technology bringing us closer together. But if you were to protest that and say, 'I'm not going to use a smartphone, I'm not going to use email, I'm not going to use social media,' it's like you're no longer a part of humanity.

In our culture the way women have been represented in American film had a pretty big impact on my self-esteem and I'm sure it did on a lot of other girls. I think they have a greater psychological impact that anybody's willing to talk about.

If you're an evil company who's casting minorities to be in your commercial to get the politically correct card, it's like putting a band-aid over a bigger problem. But I think it's an incredible start.

I love British folk music, but I'm not obsessed with it. I love the Celtic stuff, and Enya is a favorite, but that's more electronic.

Climate change is often the first thing I think about it in the morning, and the last thing I think about before I go to bed. It is not something that escapes that my mind, so inevitably, I had to kind of express that existential terror through art and music. My hope is to channel that confusion and energy into something good.

A lot of church music really inspired me. A lot of ancient music that's made for God. If you get really into the history of music, inevitably you're going to have to get into sacred religious music.

Everybody is their own galaxy, their own separate entity.

Seeing Wolf Eyes for the first time - I was fifteen. I had this crazy feeling that this my generation's Stooges. I got infected by that energy.

I am a ham, I like to joke around.

I like writing in total isolation like out in the woods somewhere.

I'm grateful that I didn't get thrown into the limelight at 19-years-old.

Our generation is the most cinematically saturated of all time. Videotapes, DVD's, streaming... Spielberg... all of it has thrust us into an endless loop of consumption.

I like to keep things deceptively simple, but hard-hitting. You can reduce everything to the perfect, essential harmony. It's what used to be done with earlier music like Gregorian chants.

Enya is a very matriarchal musical force. Her music is very feminine and she layers her voice a lot. It leaks into my music secretly on the side. There's a lot of lush layers of my voice hiding in the cracks.

I really like a lot of different music, and it's taken a while to make them all work together as a unit.