Pitchfork: Why do you think people connect with your music so specifically and intensely?

Lila Ramani: There’s a quality on the first two EPs that’s very innocent and unfiltered, because those songs were literally some of the first things I wrote. I feel like people can pick up on that.

Brian Aronow: [to Lila] People identify with your lyrical perspective.

LR: Maybe that’s it. I didn’t publish the lyrics anywhere for the first few EPs, and it’s really funny to see people interpret them online or write the wrong ones. It has been surreal to have people sing the lyrics at shows; there are some songs where they know them better than me. It makes me think about those songs differently.

Jesse Brotter: We try to make each song a little enclosed experience. They are all super thought-out in terms of the musical decisions but also how it hits your ear. Hopefully you can bite into any of them and they’ll have the same self-contained feeling.

LR: Lyrically I don’t set out to write a song about something in particular. It’s much more like I write a song and then realize what I was talking about after the fact. Like the songs are pre-written—if that doesn’t sound corny. I really feel like I’m finding the words that already exist, and then themes emerge in my head. I was going through Jinx last night, and I was like, “OK, this is starting to make sense.” My family appears a lot in the lyrics, and also there’s a moment where I sample one of my family member’s voices. But sometimes I’ll write a song and never really know what it’s about.

Are there any particular lines that you feel are emblematic of what you want to convey?

LR: In “Jinx” there’s one that John wrote—

Jonathan Gilad: You’re gonna pick the one line!

LR: It was kind of a collaboration! I feel like it is very emblematic and it’s also the last line of the album: “Don’t take me with you.” John wrote this poem when he was on a flight after this crazy car accident that happened when we were on tour. When I was writing the song, I was reading his poem and I took that line. It became a big part of the song.

Nina by Crumb

Does living in New York City influence your music at all?

LR: Definitely. It’s important that all of the songs on Jinx were written while we were living here as opposed to the EP, which I mostly wrote when I was not in New York. It’s an important part of what makes the album what it is.

BA: There’s an element of New York-ness. But I still don’t feel like I’ve settled here yet because over the last two years we’ve been on the move and so much has changed. There’s a certain uprooted-ness, too, even in my own ideas about trying to slow down sometimes, because there’s too much information from too many different places at once.

JG: That same sentiment influenced a lot of the grooves on this album. On the first EP I was trying to do a lot. As we started touring more and then moved here, a lot of the things I’m playing are trying to be more monotonous, so I can hold onto one idea per song and find comfort in that.

Have you had any strange fan experiences so far?

LR: I had my first negative interaction with a fan recently on the internet. There was someone who had my image as their icon on Instagram, and they messaged my friends some creepy stuff, like, “Where do you live?” So I reported them for impersonating me but then I think they turned around and reported me so my Instagram got deleted.

BA: In Denver, a woman at our show was talking to me about her synesthesia and how different guitar textures and sounds would make her shoulder or her foot get cold. That conversation reminded me that you have no idea what experience people are having with music.