Your new album’s opening track, which is in Farsi, seems like its most vulnerable. There’s a man’s speaking voice at the start — where’s that from?

That's my father's voice. My dad was in the war, and he was a soldier at the front line for two years. He had done his two years [of service], had collected all his things and was about to leave — then there was this attack, and he got this order to make his men drive this car with ammunition to the front line. Everyone kind of froze. The song starts with him trying to inspire them to find the courage to get into that car and drive it. So he says, "Death comes when death comes, and if I'm gonna die then I'm gonna die at home, or if I'm gonna live, then I'm gonna live in these coming hours." I think it's kind of poetic. It's kind of amazing for me that he actually survived, and he went to the border of heaven or hell and he came back — and the song is kind of about that moment. His story is amazing. I've been interviewing him for my album.

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Have you learned things that you didn't know before?

Yes. My dad was the one who came with me to Iran because I couldn't go by myself, and he helped me to film the [“Refugee”] video. Our relationship grew so much from making that video together. I wasn't even planning on bringing my dad, it was more him telling me that I can't go alone, because he knew much more than I did how strict it is. I've been to Iran a lot, but I was always there just visiting my cousins, so I never really experienced the government and the surveillance system.

Did that surprise you?

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Yes. The magnitude of it surprised me. I've always known that it's a strict society in that way, but I didn't realize how strict it was. We were stopped every other second. As soon as I had my camera up we were stopped. So yeah, it was difficult. I'm really proud of the video and I'm really happy that I made it, but there's also a lot of sorrow in me, because that video is maybe a reason that I can't go back to Iran. There's nobody who's ever gonna call me up and say, “Hey you're not welcome” — I have to go there and then they will stop me at the border and maybe take my passport and put me to trial or something. I don't know. So it's that uncertainty. I don't regret it, but I paid a really, really high price for making it. I just had to do what I believed in. It's such a strange time. Where am I even welcome?

It sounds like you’re stuck between these two different worlds. It must be such a frustrating place to be.

It is, and I've always been in that gap, but in different ways. But as I'm growing up I'm realizing that it's actually about my passport. I always felt like it [was] a personality thing, that I didn't fit in, or that I couldn't relate. The older I'm getting, I'm realizing that this is actually political. It's about borders and passports and ethnicity and fighting for human values. But I'm still really proud of [the “Refugee” video]. I mean, I would probably have been banned from all these countries sooner or later anyway, so I might as well just go hard.