The New Pornographers on the meaning of ‘indie’: “Lots of people don’t even know what it means. You know, if you talk to people who aren’t in the music scene and you say, ‘Oh, we’re…I don’t know…we’re an indie rock band,’ they think it’s like music from India.”

Love Is All on the mysteries of the universe: “It can drive me insane trying to fall asleep, trying to go to bed and I starting thinking about like ‘How the fuck does like a black hole work?’”

Beach House on the great outdoors: “We’re kind of indoor people…a lot of our work comes from being in tight spaces.”

My Brightest Diamond on religion: “I was using a cash register as my piano keyboard and singing ‘I just don’t know why he’s coming, I don’t know why.’ And I was talking about Jesus. I just couldn’t understand the Second Coming. This idea of the Second Coming to me as a three-year-old was really quite confusing.”

Stars Like Fleas on dating advice: “This is insane advice…From now on, just act as if you are going out with her.”

Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers on geek hierarchy: “I was the least cool of the athletes…The least cool athlete is below the coolest band geek. But I was also a geek in my own right.”

Zap Mama on fads: “It seems that when we passed 2000 everybody wants to create always a new fashion every…every month something new, every week, every day, every hour, every minute. Come on. How can we enjoy something?”

Punch Brothers on career advice: “My landord told me to change styles today…just came up to me and said, “I heard you practicing. You should change styles. It’s not what the kids want to hear.”

The Futureheads on nutrition: “Every time I go past a supermarket when I’m at home in Glasgow, I can’t help but go in and buy two Scotch eggs and eat them straight away…A Scotch egg is a boiled egg that’s wrapped in sausage meat, and then that’s wrapped in bread crumbs and then it’s deep fried.”

Bad Veins on food politics: “Was it Newsweek that had a little arugula vs. like a pint of beer or something? And arugula is supposed to represent elitism and college degrees and beer is the working man like what everybody wants. Somebody actually insulted Obama by saying he has arugula in his belly. Like ‘Oh no! He ate a vegetable!’”

Genji Siraisi on punk in New York: “It was kind of like the end of the real hardcore, real punk scene in New York. And this guy was washing his armpits out with beer and then he was getting on the stage – I don’t know if you remember the stage at CB’s but it was filthy – and then someone took a toothbrush and they were brushing their teeth with the beer off stage.”

Islands on Canada: “It’s good because there’s a grant system in place where you can apply for grants and get a bit of cash for touring, and for being Canadian essentially…and it all stems from a low self-esteem and a feeling of inferiority to America.”

Annuals on body art: “Me and Mike have bro tats. He has a glass of lava and I have a glass of water. When they blend together they make rock.”

In Flight Radio on television: “I was talking to some five-year-olds who knew that I was a musician and they told me that I should compete with this other musician guy that they knew…They have only been alive since American Idol has been around so they think that music is a big competition.”

Cadillac Sky on flashers: “A lot of audiences at bluegrass festivals that are going to flash you, they have to pick their skirt up. Those breasts have fallen that far.”

Passenger on guilty pleasures: “I love power ballads. You knonw the sort of disgusting, massive permed hair. Wind machines. Songs about highways and hearts.”

Juliana Hatfield on rock goddesses: “Why aren’t there more female guitar heroes? Why aren’t there more female guitar innovators?”

Ra Ra Riot on guns: “Every six minutes someone gets shot. That’s a Marc Jacobs ad I saw in the city.”

Uh Huh Her on the music business: “I was a terrible business person…I’m more the artist than the fat, cigar-smoking CEO.”

The Morning Benders on how they met: “We were all working at Disneyland for one reason or another. We were all at Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride…It seemed like after that wasn’t there, there was no point to really stick around because it was a dead scene, you know. So we started a band.”

Brendan James on resourcefulness: “I thought, ‘Where are the pianos in New York City? I gotta find these pianos.’ And they were in ballrooms. So I would sneak in, I would dress up, I would try to be in a little bit of a disguise depending on the hotel.”

Artanker Convoy on preshow moisturizing: “I tend to powder my chafing areas and general hand lubrication for all of us. We have a vat.”

Mike Edison on climbing the corporate ladder: “We met at Gleason’s gym at midnight and I squashed the motherfucker with my heart punch. And the next day I moved into his office on the 82nd floor of the Empire State Building. I was 24 years old. And that’s how careers are built.”

The Kooks on influences: “You won’t realize you’re doing it, and then you realize the song you’ve written is sort of a Beatles melody. That always pisses me off.”

Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene on fitness: “I try to get some exercise. I always stretch regularly twenty minutes or a half hour before the show because if I have a big stage I can be fairly acrobatic.”

Efterklang on the word ‘indie’: “In the end, you can put ‘indie’ in front of different things and it creates an edge to whatever you say afterward.”

Esperanza Spalding on her training method: “To most of my students I’ll say: I haven’t been playing longer than you. It’s approach, it’s not time.”

Project Jenny Project Jan on hype: “A lot of people don’t get to mature their sound in time to be yesterday’s news.”

TAB on copycats: “I’ve seen countless bands that just dress up like Guns ‘N’ Roses and they play like Guns ‘N’ Roses and they’re ‘dangerous.’ But the thing is you can’t do it again. You have to be yourself and make it new.”

The Presets on songwriting: “It’s like going to the toilet. It’s something we have to do every day. If you don’t get it out then you’re going to get cranky.”

We Are Scientists on their sound: “Have you ever seen that You Tube video of the boa constrictor – the dead boa constrictor – that they cut upon and a full wildebeest comes out? I don’t know if that is the visual equivalent of the sound of our band but I feel like those two are at least bound in some way.”

Young Knives on their early critics: “They said it was like a clown, a drunk clown – a drunk Santa Claus – pissing himself in a shopping center.”

Quincy Coleman on her creative process: “To me it feels like getting pregnant with songs. And I can feel it, I can feel it coming. And they will come in bunches. I’ll have like triplets or quadruplets.”

Mike Doughty on spell checking tattoos: “I know a woman who thought she was getting the word ‘chaos’ in Chinese on like a tramp stamp area but actually it says ‘livestock’, which is kind of uniquely insulting.”

Jim Boggia on the Iraq war: “Nothing goes with arrogance like incompetence.”

Frightened Rabbit on art: “I’ve never had a wank in front of a painting. Never.”

Clinic on psychedelia: “I think everyday reality is quite psychedelic. I think when you kind of dig beneath the surface with most people, normality doesn’t really exist.”

Gemma Hayes on seduction: “That doesn’t come natural to me. I can’t even wear heels. I walk like a farmer in heels.”

Everest on L.A. life: “I have a hard time staying in bed because the sun is out every day and birds are singing. You walk out and you’re in Snow White, like birds tying ribbons around your head.”

Heloise & The Savoir Faire: “We’re sort of mixing disco with ethnic regions and homelessness, in a really tactful way.”

Wild Sweet Orange on MTV: “It’s like the Food Network on cocaine but for horny 15-year-old children.”

The Wombats on the animal kingdom: “Dolphins are the only ones that have casual sex. Because they enjoy it.”

Team Robespierre on the touring hell: “The van broke down in the heart of Death Valley. That was kind of crazy because we were stuck there for three days. The only thing in the town was a giant thermometer, the world’s largest thermometer.”

Plants and Animals on wild American women: “We were hoping in Texas we were going to attract some Girls Gone Wild. I just figured that they would just be around…like if I could just yell that out somewhere somebody somewhere would say ‘I’m one of those Girls Gone Wild!’”

Black Kids on growing up evangelical: “I was such a nerd in high school…I carried my Bible and all that.”

Rose Hill Drive on playing with Pete Townshend: “He’s got these bright blue eyes and when he looks at you you’re like ‘Yeah…God…I hope he can’t see me quivering.’”

Mugison on commercialism: “You have to cash in on the cow, you know, if it’s milking.”