Mac DeMarco! It's actually you. Like, do you even understand?" A female teenage fan, dressed in flowy fabrics and looking not unlike the average Coachella attendee, is practically breathless standing next to the indie singer and guitarist. She eyes him seductively.

"Well, hello," he says with a goofy gap-toothed grin before politely informing her that, yes, it is in fact him, but now's not the best time to chat—because here outside a music venue in Nashville, smoking one Marlboro Red after another, DeMarco is attempting to humor a reporter slinging questions at him. She'll soon walk away a bit dejected, a bit dazed, a bit giddy that she met him nonetheless. Soon enough, another fan will spot DeMarco and walk on over: "Mac!"

Spend time around DeMarco and things tend to go this way. He'll tell you he doesn't know why it happens to him so much, but approachability is central to his charm and success. "Even when I'm feeling tired and people have questions for me," he says, "I don't want anybody to feel like I sheisted them."

DeMarco, 27, has made a name for himself as the easygoing, relatable, and carefree musician dude—the one you drank beers with that one time at that random house party, who's always down for a good time. He's been known for drunken, over-the-top antics, both onstage and off. But when DeMarco lived in Far Rockaway, Queens, he gave out his address and had fans come by for coffee. Last month, he invited fans to a public barbecue near his home in Los Angeles' Silver Lake neighborhood. And for an hour on this particular spring afternoon, he stood at a table inside the concert venue, signing posters and shoes and shirts and accepting gifts—an Elton John and Billy Joel shirt, a fan-drawn pencil sketch of him. Appreciative if not slightly baffled, DeMarco says his mantra for everything "is to just kind of roll with it."

The Edmonton native carries himself with the same breezy, laid-back vibe as the indie-rock guitar music he makes — like a goofier Neil Young or John Lennon, with a dash of The Grateful Dead. DeMarco plays all the major festivals and has three excellent albums and an EP to his name, but he can seem as though he just stumbled into this whole fame thing. His latest album, This Old Dog, is spare and soft and personal, and it's open about his rocky relationship with his largely absentee father. He'll tell you the LP was a creative risk, but one he felt comfortable taking if only because his fan base is along for the ride.

"It's a good thing that people meet me and are like 'Oh, this is a completely normal guy,' because it hammers down the point," DeMarco explains in an interview that touches on his cult of personality, highly dedicated fan base and ever-evolving musical craft. "Especially for young people on the Internet nowadays. Because it's hard to differentiate between complete bullshit and something that's real."

GQ: Your fans feel personally invested in your career in a way that's rare nowadays.

Mac DeMarco: I always tried to be an approachable, comfortable, normal person. Because when I was growing up and listening to bands and finding out about them, it always freaked me out when it was this sexy, cold dark rock star; a cool guy all handsome and beautiful. So I just tried to not be that. I'm just doing me. I don't really know anything else.

Interestingly enough, as everything about your career gets larger you seemed to go smaller and more inward looking with your new album.

Doing the big sexy third album felt cheap to me for some reason. And I could have done it—just written pop songs about jack shit. I tried a couple times. "Oh yeah! These chords and these lyrics that don't make any sense!" But it didn't feel real.

It would have been a departure from your entire everyman M.O.

I suppose so. I think all my records are pretty personal, but I think this time I just forgot to use the vagueness in the lyrics or in the writing.

Listeners have identified songs like "My Old Man" ("Uh-oh, looks like I'm seeing more of my old man in me") as especially autobiographical.

I was worried about it. I hadn't done anything that direct before. I've written about my dad a shitload, and my other family, and all facets of my life. But a lot of the songs on this album, I didn't think I was gonna put on an album. I was just writing them and they were sitting on my computer and I would listen to them every so often. And then I put them on an album, and it's like, "OK, well what comes with this?"