When you lose someone that's really important to you, I feel like it's something that never really goes away. It's almost learning how to live with an empty feeling; it's weird. Something's always missing, but you kind of get used to it.

Making music was always a big interest for me.

I studied a lot from bossa nova, and I used to listen to it a lot as a kid because my mum would play it. I even wanted to learn Portuguese in high school so I could sing in it.

Conexao,' which means 'connection' in Portuguese, is about exploring the more nuanced highs and lows of romance.

I wasn't born into a family that told me that I wasn't capable of what my brother was capable of. I can do anything.

Well, I have a Norwegian father who emigrated to America in the 1950s, and he still speaks with varying degrees of an accent. Over my lifetime my ear has been well-tuned to that accent. Any first generation kid has that wonderful gift from their parents.

It's as though all the terms of a family were present at one time rather than his dad and his mum. Not just a present authority, but the resident memory of what qualifies what else is the case.

Competition works. Ask any parent if their child will run faster from the house to the mailbox if he runs by himself or if he races to the mailbox with his sister. It's a no brainer.