My philosophy is generally to keep things as simple as possible.

I just make up lyrics off the top of my head. A lot of times, there's a phrase I really like, and I kind of build the song around that.

I felt like I was building this world brick by brick with each layer of instrumentation I was doing. I could see it growing in some ways. I feel like most writers feel the same way. You're almost living inside of this magic world that you're building.

I know of some guitar-based rock bands that refuse to record anything that they can't play live. But some of the best stuff I come up with are studio-based performances - bringing out whatever accident I had in the studio and building a song around that.