If you're walking through the Union Square subway station - New Yorkers know it's obnoxious and crowded, and in the summer it's too hot - there are always amazing musicians playing, and sometimes there are multiple, different musicians set up in there.

Caroline Polachek

I went to art school, and I studied drawing and video art, and I've always approached music so visually as a result that I found it really difficult in the past to kind of hand off music to another director, 'cause it just ends up being this kind of mid-zone where it's nobody's vision, really.

Caroline Polachek

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.

Caroline Polachek

My first concert was Third Eye Blind.

Caroline Polachek

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

Caroline Polachek

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.

Caroline Polachek

I kind of think that's the best way to operate; even when I'm in sessions writing with other artists, I'm always pulling from the kind of emotions that are the most raw in my own life and offering them up in the studio.

Caroline Polachek

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.

Caroline Polachek

My parents got divorced when I was really young and I was a very hyperactive kid, so both parents independently would play Enya at the house to calm me down and soothe me as a kid.

Caroline Polachek

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.

Caroline Polachek

I like listening to ambient music, especially in very scenic places because I think it allows for the most freedom of thought.

Caroline Polachek

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.

Caroline Polachek

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.

Caroline Polachek

I just started studying opera - very, very much as hobby - and for some reason I've been gravitating toward French composers, like a lot of Debussy and Faure. I find it a really sinuous and spooky language to sing in.

Caroline Polachek

When I was in middle school, I loved Egyptian mythology.

Caroline Polachek

A lot of the music comes out of that conflict of wanting this other thing and feeling guilty about wanting it, and then it guiding me somewhere despite my kicking and screaming.

Caroline Polachek

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.

Caroline Polachek

I think as I get older, I'm just going to start making smooth, new age music - no joke.

Caroline Polachek

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.

Caroline Polachek

I think women are taught in the music industry that once you're 35, you've expired, and I'm here to prove that factually incorrect.

Caroline Polachek

Young people have realised that an artist is in charge of what they're doing - this crazy cynicism that artists were puppets has disappeared.

Caroline Polachek