Is there any moment in particular that stands out about working with Desus and Mero on this, because I thought they were just so hilarious throughout the entire show.

I mean, Desus and Mero fully steal the show for me. I'm so glad that we were able to get them cast. I've known those guys for a while, and working on Neo Yokio is partially how they got to meet Nick [Weidenfeld, executive producer], who ended up helping them make the show on Vice, so it's kind of cool. It's amazing how much time has passed. It's so bizarre to sit on a project this long.

Again, when I was trying to cast Desus and Mero, they literally weren't even on TV yet, so that definitely took some convincing. I always thought they were so funny. I might have met Mero four or five years ago. We just kind of met on Twitter. I remember we were just talking about life, and he was like, "Oh, I'm a teacher." I was like, "Oh, I used to be a teacher!" We were both New York City public school teachers. Then I was like, "What are you trying to do?" He was like, "I'm trying to do some TV stuff." I was like, "I'm trying to do some TV stuff!" So literally the first time we ever got a drink together in New York, we had some vague plan: "One day we'll do some kind of TV stuff together."

The fact that their show's come out and been such a success is so amazing. The fact that we got to make this weird-ass cartoon together and we're working on some other stuff together... Yeah, to me, they're such a huge, huge part of the show.

Again, I love the fact that in this bizarre cartoon, we have these amazing actors like Jude Law and Susan Sarandon, two legends, and then we have people who have never professional acted before who truly hold their own. Obviously, when you record animation you almost never have everybody in the room together, but very quickly after we made the first episode I realized we needed more of that, these scenes where the squad is together. The squad of the show is Jaden, Jude, Desus, and Mero. Literally, if you told me and Mero, when we first met, that one day we'd be working on a project together that would be him, Desus, Jude Law, and Jaden virtually hanging out in this cartoon universe, we'd have been like, "That's insane." But those are my favorite moments.

At the start of the call, you said you were deep into the Vampire Weekend album. Could you tell us anything about how that's going and what it'll be like?

Yeah, I don't know if I can say what it's gonna be like. “It's funny. A typical day, I might see some comment on Instagram or something being like, "Wow, Vampire Weekend is really done. You're really not making music anymore." Literally I'm in the studio tearing my hair out because I'm so anxious about getting the lyrics right or something. So whatever. That's the funny duality of being in this period before anybody's heard anything.

What can I actually say about [the new album]? Maybe because it's the morning and I just drank a cup of coffee, I feel great about it. Usually around 4 p.m. is the time that I start getting really stressed out.

When I started working on the cartoon, part of the impulse of doing something outside of music was just to take a break, try to do something else, do something narrative, not have to make music, work with a different set of people, kind of learn something new. Whenever we wrapped up touring Modern Vampires Of The City, [in] 2014, I legitimately looked around. I felt like an era had ended. Obviously an era had ended for Vampire Weekend, but in another sense, I was like, "Wow. I've been a professional musician for seven years now." It's like a seven-year cycle. You look around and you're like, "The world has changed. The scene has changed." That's just what happened when you go [from] 23 to 30. That's a big seven years for anybody.

That’s a big age gap.

I looked around and for the first time in seven years, I didn't immediately have this strong sense inside of myself of what to do next musically. One thing I can say is that after working on the cartoon, I immediately had it back.

When I'd see some older musician I admired start to put out work that was redundant, pointless, mediocre, there's always some part of me that's like, Man, why don't they just quit? I'm never gonna do that. I've always had this little thing about, I'm only gonna make an album when I have that feeling this is the right album for us to make now. It's new, but it's continuing to tell the same story. I can say that I do feel very confident in that aspect of it.

But yeah, the next few months are gonna be just classically brutal. Finishing these songs, putting the finishing touches on a demo that you've listened to for two years straight. Any musician, or really any artist, knows the feeling. I have a feeling the next few months are just gonna breeze by. I truly can't wait to start sharing it with people, because I want to prove to people that I have been working. I don't know what you thought I was doing, but I've been working.

