Q. You have spent this year writing and releasing songs very quickly and trying to close the distance between you and your listeners. How did all this begin?

A. There was a breaking point around New Year’s. I had been working on the record that I’m working on right now and just found myself adjusting the bass frequency of a kick drum for a week. And I thought, this is not the way I want my creativity and my writing to work. I felt like I needed an outlet that was more spontaneous where I could release ideas the moment I got them. And I wanted to use songwriting to tell other people’s stories, not just my own. With “Postcards,” I also found it interesting that at the end there would be 52 songs that would paint a picture of the year.

Q. Tell me about some of the people you met and the songs you wrote for “Ghostwriting.”

A. In Cincinnati, I think I worked for at least 17 hours each day, and I interviewed about 12 storytellers during four days. It’s a cliché, but I loved every story. I talked to this guy who had moved to America from Indonesia and his family was struggling with the idea of the American dream — the distance between the life they had imagined in the States and the experience of being immigrants, and the way that took a toll on their marriage.

Q. Were any of the songs funny?

A. I’ve always liked when humor is not too obvious. I love for example the story I called “Cartwheels,” which is a very touching story about a woman who thinks back on the night when her mother dies. She’s sitting at the hospital just waiting, and she and her friend find an abandoned hall and they decide to do cartwheels down it. It’s not a “ha-ha” humor but it’s a beautiful, funny moment — as she says, “a brief ray of light in otherwise terrible night.”

Q. You also performed “Ghostwriting” in Gothenburg. What was the difference between the Swedish and American versions?