Deep Talk About the Songwriting Process. That's It.

Eli Hewson of Inhaler likes to stay up and writes all night. Come morning, he heads to bed and will sometimes pass his father Bono (yes, that Bono), who is just beginning his day and starting to write. Hewson's bandmate Josh Jenkinson wants no part of those late night writing sessions. "I just go to bed," he says. Jenkinson is a daytime writer; like Hewson, he's most productive during the day when no one else is around.

Hamilton Leithauser keeps regular hours. And those hours can be early: on the day we talked, he had started writing at 5am. It’s a problem if he doesn’t write every day, he says. "I keep regular hours, and if I don’t write every day, I feel anxious or like I’ve done something wrong.

If you see Cecilia Castleman browsing the paint aisle at Home Depot, she’s probably not looking for paint. She’s looking for song ideas. Castleman finds inspiration everywhere, but paint names, she says, are particularly rich sources for song ideas and lyrics. Her debut self-titled album is good. Really, really good.

Rebecca and Megan Lovell, the GRAMMY-winning sisters who compose Larkin Poe, are “serial idea keepers.” This means they don’t write every day. Instead, “we pull back on ideas until we are ready to write,” they say. This seasonal writing, as they and other songwriters like to call it, requires discipline: you have to resist the urge to write every day and only write during certain times. The advantage of this is that the words flow freely when it’s time to write.

Flipturn's Tristan Duncan (guitar), Devon VonBalson (drums), and Dillon Basse (vocals) join the pod and go deep into their creative processes. The band’s latest album Burnout Daysis out January 24 on Dualtone Records.

Is Vera, the debut album by Phil and Tim Hanseroth (The Hanseroth Twins), really a debut? After all, they've won three GRAMMYs and have been nominated seven more times for their songwriting collaboration with Brandi Carlile. (They're the twins who flank her in concert live.)