You have been touring a lot this year, how’s life on the road?
We’re lucky to get to tour so much, and love having the chance to make music our lives. But you do get a bit homesick and miss your friends, so you just hope they don’t think you’re a jerk for disappearing for large portions of life.

How was the Laneway Festival?
Laneway Festival was awesome, we got to see and party with so many cool bands, like Toro y Moi, Cults, Girls, Twin Shadow, Geoffrey O’Connor, Yuck, Chairlift and Drums—Neil Finn [of Pajama Club and Crowded House] even let us borrow a spare guitar when we were missing one. We’ve toured with Twin Shadow and Girls before, and they’re super lovely people, but it’s been cool to get to see a bit more of some other bands we’ve never spent much time with. We’re really grateful to the festival for including us and really had a blast these last few weeks.

Who inspires you musically?
I like Stephen Pastel of The Pastels a lot, as well as Teenage Fanclub and Felt. I think treating indie bands as celebrities is a bit odd, but I can’t help but get a bit flustered any time I see a band that means a lot to me, even if they’re only famous to me and a handful of music nerds around the world.

In your opinion, what makes a good indie band?
Good songs, I think. I really value that more than musicianship, cool hair or a specific trendy genre of the moment. Maybe that sounds a bit naive, but to me good songs always win.

At what point will you consider yourself really successful?
On some level, just getting to do the thing you love, playing music, means you’ve succeeded. I feel it’s really selfish to speak of yourself as a failure or not worthy when you get a chance to do something so many people dream of being able to do—playing music you’ve written to people all over the world. There is so much artifice in that traditional artistic self-loathing. If you hate yourself so much and you think the music you make is terrible, go get a “real” job or quit moaning.

What are you looking forward to for your Bangkok gig?
Well, one of my best friends who made our early videos [“Everything With You” from Young Adult Friction] is Thai-American, and he is one of the coolest people I know. So I just assume that Thai people are really cool, artistic and remarkable. So it’ll be fun to just hang out and maybe let some people take us out to a bar or something cool after our show.