Win Butler

Usually, I think you have most of your musical influences locked down by the time you're 16.

I found out a lot of stuff through MTV, and I didn't even have cable, I just saw it at friends' houses. But my culture in junior high was totally influenced by it.

The music in Haiti is all tied up in voodoo and African rhythm, and so there's this funny thing: go to a voodoo ceremony, and then go to a Catholic church and tell me which music you liked better, to which one the music is more integral.

Funny songs aren't usually that good. Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it's kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.

Our music may sound big emotionally, but that's more to do with the playing, the level of musicianship and the full-on energy. Often, the lyrics are often quite small and focused.

Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically... I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.

I had a somewhat religious upbringing. Not strict, but it was there, and I'm kind of thankful for that. If you grow up just watching MTV, that's its own form of religion, and it's not even based on happiness or communal responsibility. I mean, try to construct a worldview out of that.

I'm not practising, I don't go to church, but what I got from it was a sense of belonging to something bigger. What I really miss is being forced to be in a community with people that aren't the same as you. Then, you really have to work through the ways that you're different.

I grew up in a somewhat religious family. My dad's family isn't religious at all, but my mom's side of the family is, so I was exposed to church a bit.

The film 'Black Orpheus' is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil.

My parents live near the ocean, and I've spent a lot of time walking through the water at night, being around the water.

We're exposed to ideas everywhere. The world is full of ideas. I think that television is a pretty powerful medium in that regard.