How do you go through the songwriting process when it’s just you and your guitar? Do you ever hesitate because there isn’t really someone to check you, or do you like not having to run your ideas past someone else?

MK: I think I have a cool thing going because when it comes to sitting down and writing a song by myself there’s a magic in that that happens and I do that. There’s songs like “Learning to Love Again” and “Rochester” on my record that are just me and a guitar in my living room. But a lot of songs that I write, the music is a collaboration. A lot of the record we would sit down and create beats and grooves and changes, almost like a hip-hop record. Then I would take it away and try to write the most gut-wrenching story over the grooves. Maybe we would add guitar later so I had something to do on stage, but there is a lot of collaborations going on.

Do you go into writing a new album with an idea in mind? How much thought goes into an album?

MK: It’s much more organic, how the songs come out. Singer/songwriters get boring most of the time, so I knew that I wanted to have moments where you would put this record on in your car and it would make your head bob. But I also knew that I wanted to have these stories that had to follow, these gut-wrenching narratives of people. I want one of those people to be myself and those people around me, and I guess that’s all I knew when I set out to make this record. Me falling in love and getting married and that part of my life, there are a long of songs about that butterfly-in-your-stomach thing, because I was going through that.

from this interview

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