It’s Better Oblivion Community Center roundup time.

We’ve got an interview with DIY Mag:

“I was spending a lot of time in LA in the last couple of years, and I ended up hanging out with Phoebe and her friends a lot,” Conor explains, speaking to DIY over the phone from his native Omaha, Nebraska, where he and Phoebe are recording in the run-up to Christmas. “They’re always working on songs together, and trying to write for different people’s records, and their own records, so it’s a cool scene to be around.” He continues: “[There are] a lot of songwriters that are happy to share their songs and so we just wrote one of those songs on a whim, and then it turned into…’let’s do another one!’ And then ‘maybe we’ll make a single!’ and then…” Well, then it turned into the Better Oblivion Community Center.

A video interview with NME:

Asked why they chose to release the album by surprise, Bridgers told NME: “I really wanted to, because even before we started this I had a really good idea of what our hypothetical band would sound like. I don’t think it does like sound that, so I wanted to make sure that people didn’t think it was going to sound a certain way. It’s not duet-y. I think we stayed pretty true to it being its own band.”

An interview with Rolling Stone:

Bridgers and Oberst, who plan to take their new band on the road this spring, share a jovial familiarity with one another. Discussing the album in advance of its surprise release, Bridgers explains the process of deciding who sang lead on which song: “Conor — sorry to speak for you — but Conor doesn’t sing harmony.”

“No offense taken,” he replies with a chuckle.

“I would make an active choice to be like, ‘Okay, I always sing harmony, so on a couple of these songs I want Conor to sing harmony,’” Bridgers continues.

“It made me a better singer to have to do that,” Oberst adds. “It was cool to stretch myself a bit. It’s definitely not my strong suit, but Phoebe’s really fucking great at it. So to have a vocal coach like her being there being like, ‘No, you can do it. Try harder…’”

And an audio interview with Matt Wilkinson at Beats 1.