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Part of the reason that I moved to Los Angeles is that even though my mom introduced me to all kinds of music, I really wanted to work on having my own identify, on being who I am and doing what I do, and seeing how people responded.

In college, I faced an interesting problem. I wanted to play music all the time and yet I wasn't ready for anyone to hear it. To remedy this, I took to retreating to stairwells as a safe place to sing and write music. It was there that I wrote most of my songs in college and really grew into an artist.

All your experiences, the places you go to, the encounters you have with people, and, of course, your cultural trappings all make you who you are, and who you are makes your music.

The advice I have for new artists is this - write great songs and play them live as often as possible. Get residencies all over town and crush it.

I really like singing, but coming from a small town like where I grew up, how do you start that journey?

Living in a capital in Europe but still surrounded by mountains and ocean, my relationship to music was strongest walking to school and back. I would sing to myself and very quickly started mapping out my melodies to landscapes - at the time I just thought it was very matter of fact, a common thing to do.

Learn it well in your head, know it well, pick things you know and bring the old you and all the experience you have from singing these various kinds of feelings that are still related to what I have done in the rest of my career.

I think the thing that I really wanna bring is that I have a full world of music and imagination and ideas that I want to create as an artist, and that's my main thing that I want to do.

Being in L.A. has definitely given me the opportunity to experience how my music sounds in real life because I can drive around and listen to the mixes, which I couldn't do in New York. I get to feel how a song works in combination with a sunset and a drive through the mountains.