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“I guess I swapped my parents and my family for Bob Dylan,” says Robyn Hitchcock, remembering an evolutionary moment in his creative journey. “I just heard “Like a Rolling Stone” every day for two months  as I was going into my teens, it was my kind of bar mitzvah really. My molecular structure was changed over the course of 18 months and by the end of 1967 when I had gone through the change, and I was like a sort of skinny, dark haired version of what I am now I was writing the lyrics and I’d got a guitar. My parents, for their sins, gave me a cheap acoustic guitar. I just took it everywhere with me like a few years earlier I  would have taken my little panda teddy bear. I would always go everywhere with a plastic dinosaur in my pocket — I was a very OCD kid who wanted their comfort. And I just replaced that with the guitar and my Bob Dylan records and my portable record player. By the time I was 15 I haven’t consciously decided it, but there was nothing else I wanted to do.” In episode 146, hear the legendary singer-songwriter share more about his love for Dylan, his adolescent musical awakening, connecting with an attraction to art that is absurd or surreal, how he began writing songs and the discoveries that led to his work with The Soft Boys, insights into how his approach to music has changed and how he lets the songs find him, like birds finding seed. We also talk about his new album, The Confuser, his latest memoir, Stranded in The Future, and more! Robyn is on tour in Europe this month. Get tickets here.

“I felt this really compelling amount of nostalgia and I was kind of living in the past, so I thought that maybe songwriting was a way to capture that and a way to protect it, because I felt like it was slipping away -- just... childhood," says Bedouine's Azniv Korkejian, talking about the inspiration for her beautiful new album, Neon Summer Skin. "I felt really sad about it and I started to write with that in mind and it was kind of more than anything kind of therapeutic for me, I understood that I needed to address it because I understood that it was all consuming.” It was such a pleasure to finally get to do this interview with Azniv. We’ve been friends for years, but there was still so much I didn’t know about her earlier life and her creative journey. In episode 145, we delve into that evolutionary stuff: singing along with Mariah Carey’s Music Box as a kid, falling in love with artists like The Strokes and Norah Jones as she got a bit older, working in sound editing for film and TV after college, and eventually starting to perform her own music a little more than a decade ago. And we also talk about the making of Neon Summer Skin and how it helped her process some of the bittersweet nostalgia she was feeling about childhood and the safety of family. Bedouine has a North American tour starting in mid-October. Get tickets here.

“I started writing poems and singing them over instrumental songs I’d made, and I realized that the melody was coming to me as I read them, and I was like, ‘Oh, there’s music in the words!,” says Alex Cameron, recalling how he first discovered his preferred method of songwriting. “The lyric had the melody in it. I didn’t have to come up with the melody and think about which words would fit, I just had to press record and sing the words while listening to the music and the melody’s in there. That’s why I love writing words first.” In episode 144 of the LSQ podcast, the Australian singer-songwriter discusses his impressive fifth studio album, Late To Set, an elevated showcase for his signature style of brooding, witty, character-driven songcraft. Cameron shares insights into his creative philosophies and the evolution of his approach to music. He also reflects on the artists he loved as a kid: Buddy Holly, Nina Simone, Dire Straits, Outkast, Aphex Twin, Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell, the Strokes and more. Alex is on tour in North America in September, and opening for The Strokes in Europe in October. Get tickets here.

Even during the past decade while he was busy with Stranger Things, Finn Wolfhard still has always found time to make music - whether with his teenage bands Calpurnia and The Aubreys, or more recently under his own name, starting with his 2025 album, Happy Birthday, an impressive debut recorded using four- and eight-track cassette. For his wonderful new album, Fire From The Hip, he’s elevated his approach in every possible way, expanding the sonic palette, fidelity and songcraft for a confident collection of indie rock tunes that evoke Wilco and Teenage Fanclub and Faces and of Montreal, among other touchstones. In episode 143 of the LSQ podcast, Finn talks about the making of the album, how he approached it differently from Happy Birthday, and the satisfaction he got from working with a community of artist friends. He also talks about how he first became obsessed with music as a kid thanks to the Beatles and the Ramones. And he shares some details about film he’s working on about The Replacements (based on Bob Mehr’s definitive book about the band), why he relates to bassist Tommy Stinson and a dream he had the other night about frontman Paul Westerberg. Finn is on tour now and has additional dates in the fall. Get tickets here.

This spring, Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien released a beautiful and soul-stirring album called Blue Morpho, and in this episode, he shares with great depth and candor what inspired the album, his approach to recording it, and the transformative self exploration required to make it. One of the elements of the project was his desire to capture sounds at 432 Hz, and you’ll hear him explain the idea behind that, right at the beginning of the interview. But from there, we go way back into his history as an artist, to his early childhood listening to Simon & Garfunkel with his mom while she sewed, singing in the boys choir, discovering guitar music and freaking out over bands like The Jam and The Police and The Smiths, and while still a teenager meeting and forming a band with the group of school friends who would become Radiohead. Honestly, this interview is one of those occasions, when I can’t believe what an honor it was to hear from an artist whose music has been so important to me personally, and for him to share about the artists that had similar impact on his life. There’s an incredible story right near the end of the episode where Ed talks about being on tour with Radiohead in the US in 1995, and having all of their gear stolen. So they took a fateful trip to San Francisco to get some new guitars and things, but they only had one audio cassette to listen to during the road trip, and the music that was on it ended up inspiring some of their approach to OK Computer. You’ll have to listen all the way through to find out what was on that tape.

“Words were always my weapon,” says Genesis Owusu, talking about the love of creative writing he discovered as a child. “Also kind of ironically, conversation wasn’t always my weapon, so I always felt like the truest and rawest and most authentic of myself came out when I was writing stories or poetry. I’ve always loved world-building. Whether that be though a storyline or a soundtrack or a visual, I’ve kind of just managed to find myself in a path where I can create those worlds that I always wanted to create.” The Ghanian Australian artist’s new album, his third full-length, Redstar Wu & the Worldwide Scourge, is easily one of my favorite albums of 2026 — a powerful and genre defying collection of banger after banger. Although his previous records were more allegorical, for this one, he says there was no mincing words, no grand metaphors, nothing to distract from getting across his message that humanity is too divided, and that we need to come together as a community for the betterment of our common good. We also delve into how his love of science fiction and creative writing helped him connect with that world-building instinct, how his older brother - also an artist - inspired him to start making music, how his songs result from epic jam sessions followed by obsessive collating of sounds, and we talked about anime and André 3000 and Uno and much more. Get tickets for his upcoming shows here.

Like many of their fans, I discovered Corook’s music on TikTok, and I was immediately charmed by the sweetness and humor and directness of their songs. Honestly, as someone who is newer to using TikTok — I only set up my page about a year ago — I’ve been surprised that many artists who are hugely popular there, with viral videos amassing millions of views, have relatively little exposure in more traditional music media. Which is silly, because there’s some awesome shit on there, and as if music needs more arbitrary silos than it already has. Anyway, Corook has been one of my favorite TikTok discoveries and I was delighted when they agreed to get together over Zoom for this interview. Last week, Corook released a great new EP called “How Do I Relate To You?” that includes their latest viral hit “Scooby,” so look for that online now. In the interview we delve into the making of the EP and, as usual, all the important creative milestones leading up to it. We talk about the impact of a Linkin Park DVD their dad brought home, relating to Britney Spears, teaching themself guitar with help from YouTube, obsessing over Sara Bareilles, the piano as a tool for exploratory songwriting, going back to cowboy chords, learning how to go viral and then learning that going viral isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, collaborating like dads in a garage for their new EP, and more.

Talking about his band American Football’s latest return following a long absence, frontman Mike Kinsella invokes the notorious D.B. Cooper, saying, “I feel like we jumped out of a plane with a suitcase of money, except it was old demos, and then we faked our own death. We didn’t know we were faking it, we thought we were dead, everybody thought we were dead, and then it’s like, oh we’re alive, we have a new identity, we can do whatever we want.” American Football has just returned with an excellent fourth self-titled album (aka LP4), seven years after the previous one. Famously, earlier on for American Football, after the midwest emo legends released their genre defining self-titled debut album in 1999, they immediately broke up and it was 17 years before we got their next album. So Mike and I talk about that in this interview, we also discuss his personal creative history and his evolution as a songwriter, the influence of his older brother Tim, with whom he had the band Cap’n Jazz back in the day, and how artists like Depeche Mode and Dinosaur Jr. have deeply impacted his songwriting. American Football are on tour in North America right now, and you can get tickets here.

“Kneecap was born out of this need to represent the identity of young people who speak Irish in the city, an identity a lot of people around the world wouldn’t know exists,” says Móglaí Bap of Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap. “When I was growing up, you wouldn’t have seen the language on mainstream radio or BBC1 or in the cinemas, so as a teenager it wouldn’t have been that cool to speak Irish. So Kneecap was part of pushing that boundary and seeing what we could do, and also having a bit of craic, as we say.”  In the lead up to their powerful new album, Fenian, Móglaí and bandmate Mo Chara joined me via Zoom for an in-depth discussion of their history. They talked about how the project evolved from being something they did initially for laughs and to get free tickets to festivals into a part of their larger fight against the marginalization of the Irish-language, of which they’re native speakers, and their desire to raise awareness of the harms caused by colonialism worldwide. We also discussed their childhood: Moglai’s memories of hearing his mother play traditional Irish music on her concertina, Mo Chara’s teenage experiences learning Oasis and Stone Roses songs on guitar at a Belfast youth club, how they found each other within the Irish-language community and started making music together, and how their approach to Kneecap has evolved since then. For the uninitiated, in addition to listening to Fenian and their previous album, Fine Art, I also highly recommend watching the biographical film Kneecap, which is funny and dramatic and poignant and a mix of fact and fiction, starring the band as themselves.  It’s awesome and it’s available on Netflix, Apple TV and beyond.

“I just remember being fascinated by language, it felt like this treasure I was discovering,” says Arlo Parks, of her childhood affinity with words. “I remember being obsessed with the word ‘pebble,’ and the sense of different shapes. Maybe it’s because I learned French before English, so my approach to the English language was quite, like, seeking and grasping and understanding as I went along. But the dictionary, I remember being obsessed with it.” If you’ve been a fan of Arlo Parks’ music over the course of her three beautiful albums, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to learn that the British singer-songwriter has been obsessed with words since childhood. In episode 137, she shares more about her early life explorations of poetry and song craft, memories of hearing Otis Redding from the backseat of her father’s car, discovering Miles Davis and Prince in her uncle’s vinyl collection, downloading Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs onto her iPod, trying to play all of Elliott Smith’s XO on guitar, and eventually beginning to make her own music near the end of high school. We also discuss her approach to her wonderful new album, Ambiguous Desire, and how going out to dance clubs and DJ nights brought new inspiration. And I especially loved that Arlo came over to my little LA bungalow to do this interview in person! Get tickets for her upcoming shows here.

“When I started going to rock & roll camp once a summer, I definitely always felt like there was a lot to be proven of being like a girl, a small girl,” says Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan. “My whole brain was just this ‘Be better than the boys, I have to in order to be able to even just exist’ thing, and that took some of the enjoyment out of it. But now I do have a bloodlust for getting better, and I don’t know if I would have that if it weren’t for having so much of an inferiority complex for so long.” In episode 136, Jordan delves further into how the perfectionism she developed early on, as a preciously talented kid guitarist at rock camp, has been both a blessing and a curse — on the one hand it has inspired her to constantly strive to improve,  on the other it has contributed to intense anxiety that she still battles. We discuss the theme of anxiety and obsession in her life, and the role those things played in the excellent new Snail Mail album, Ricochet. Don’t worry, we also get into a lot of lighter fare, talking about the artists she obsessed over as a kid during one of indie music’s heydays, when she poured over Tumblr to discover bands like Beach House and Warpaint and Purity Ring and St. Vincent and Lana Del Rey.  Lindsay also shares some details about the first big  Snail Mail tour for Ricochet, and some new things she and the band are trying for these shows. Get tickets and details here.

“I had never played a concert until I got a record deal with Sub Pop and they were like, ‘Well, you should consider going on tour,’" says Iron & Wine's Sam Beam. "I was like, ‘Oh shit.’ It’s a very atypical story, and it also made me suffer from a lot of imposter syndrome for a long time. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there, that I had fooled someone along the way and they were gonna find out and the gig was gonna be up.” Some 24 years later, the gig is nowhere near up for Beam,  who’s been releasing beautiful music as Iron & Wine ever since his 2002 Sub Pop Records debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle, and his latest, his 8th studio album Hen’s Teeth is another wonderful collection of music. It came out in late February and we talk about the making of the album in episode 135, and we also delve into his earlier creative history, how he began in visual arts (drawing and filmmaking) before getting his first four-track, and the inspiration he got from artists including Sebadoh, Cowboy Junkies, R.E.M., Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, among others.  We also discuss a future project he’s excited to develop — a Broadway musical! You can hear more about that near the end of the interview. Iron & Wine will be playing shows in Hawaii later this month and then embarking on a full-scale North American tour in late April. Get tickets and further info here.

“It is important to have faith when you’re making something,” says Florence Shaw, frontwoman for U.K. post-punk band Dry Cleaning, regarding the hyper-specificity of her lyrics and how they can still feel very relatable, even when she’s referencing something unfamiliar. (This, by the way, is one of my favorite things about Dry Cleaning’s music.) “You don’t have to dumb everything down and you don’t have to explain absolutely everything to the audience,” she continues. “I do feel like people will pick things up. I feel like people get it still, and that’s a satisfying thing. You have to believe in the perceptiveness of the audience.” As you’ll hear episode 134 of the LSQ podcast, the band — Flo, guitarist Tom Dowse, drummer Nick Buxton and bassist Lewis Maynard — have more to say about the idea of faith in the audience and also faith in each each other as bandmates. We also talk more about Secret Love, their brilliant third LP (and I think their best to-date), and we zoom out to discuss their creative histories individually and how they came together as Dry Cleaning. Get tickets for their upcoming tour here.

In episode 133, Sudan Archives's Brittney Parks shares the story of her creative evolution, beginning with falling in love with violin when she was in fourth grade (thanks to a school visit by Canadian fiddle group Barrage), how playing in church led to learning songs from the MTV countdown to impress her friends, and eventually learning how to make beats and record her own songs using her iPad. She also talks about the influence of artists including Ibeyi, Santigold, Lykke Li and Corinne Bailey Rae, and how she began releasing her music (under the moniker Sudan Moon) more than a decade ago. And of course we also delve into the making of her excellent latest album, The BPM, and how "driveway beef" with her LA neighbors led her to finish the project with family in Detroit, where the city's rich history of pioneering dance music helped coalesce some of her sonic ideas for the LP. Sudan Archives is currently on tour in the U.S.; get tickets here.

To kick off season 9 of the LSQ podcast, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with my old friends The Format, who are back together with their first new album since 2006’s Dog Problems. Produced by the legendary Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, Rage Against The Machine, Bruce Springsteen), Boycott Heaven is a welcome return from the duo of Nate Ruess and Sam Means, who continue to expand into new terrain on this collection. In the interview, Ruess talks about how, leading up to this album, he learned to play guitar (with help from his friend Buckethead!) and demo songs on his own, for the very first time. We also delve into the history of the band, going back to when the pair first met in high school, bonded by their shared love of Weezer and other 90s bands, and the evolution of their writing process. The Format will start their U.S. tour for Boycott Heaven in late March, and you can get tickets here.