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After Sleater-Kinney broke up in 2006 I had very little desire to play music. It took well over three years before picking up a guitar meant anything to me other than an exercise.

With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive.

Sleater-Kinney becomes bigger than the three of us. It pulls us along, in a way.

I think the B-52's were a huge influence on Sleater-Kinney. The way that there'd be a really interesting guitar line that'd be really melodic and kind of simplistic, I really related to that. The sense of melody is really intense and fun. It's not just traditional song structures, but it's very melodic and draws you in, in kind of an immediate way.

Part of this whole Sleater-Kinney 2.0 is breaking the rules. We wanted to tell our story... we feel like we need to stand up for ourselves.

I'm in this band to give volume to various struggles throughout the world. To me, the tension in this band is a minimal sacrifice.

Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.

Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.

I had gone full-on folkie; I'd had it with bands.

I liken Sleater-Kinney to a freight train. It felt like this incredible, forward-moving, powerful energy.