MATTHEW CAWS: I've been touring so much... It's kind of like non-stop nightlife when you're on tour. I've had enough nightlife to last me for two lifetimes.

BRONQUES: How do you preserve your voice and still party?

MATTHEW CAWS: It's hard. What's better than smoking... when you're drinking, right? The thing that's actually worse than smoking though, is talking. If you're yelling in someone's ear in a loud club you can really pay the price the next day.

BRONQUES: So there's validity in that whole thing Celine Dion does in not talking all day?

MATTHEW CAWS: Oh, for sure. I try to drink tons of water and do scales all day to break it in. Life could be so easy if you just did the things that were good for you. Eat well, get enough sleep, get exercise, stay in touch with friends, stay in touch with family, work everyday, try to leave places nicer than how you found them, stick to cultural things that interest you as well as entertain you whether they're hi-brow or low-brow... There's not that much to it, but doing all that is so hard...

BRONQUES: And so anti rock and roll...

MATTHEW CAWS: That's not important to me anymore...

BRONQUES: I've heard that if you practice in your falsetto, you strengthen your voice without damaging it because all the sound resonates in the head, and not the throat.

MATTHEW CAWS: That's great to know. Are you a singer?

BRONQUES: My mom was a gospel singer.

MATTHEW CAWS: Oh...

BRONQUES: I still don't get how you made your transition from one-hit wonder to writing anthemic songs like "Always Love".

MATTHEW CAWS: I just kept writing diary entries and doing the same thing, basically. But for "Always Love", I wrote it on a beautiful day in New York, when I was affected emotionally. It was heartbreakingly beautiful that day. We needed songs for the record and Ira came over and we wrote that song in 15 minutes. I stumbled upon a melody and it was exhilarating. You never know when it will happen. So even though I'm not as positive in real life as what it sounds like on that song, I thought it would be a great letter to myself, so that everytime I sing the song or read the title I would get that feeling and remember that I should be excited about everyday. When you think about it, all the complications in life are optional.

BRONQUES: It's great how "Popular" was cool partly because of the way your voice sounded, and with the new more serious stuff, it sounds perfect too but in a different way...

MATTHEW CAWS: Let me be honest. I'm fragile sometimes, and you can hear it in my voice. So lyrics that may seem naïve, or Hallmark-y, or put-on or EMO, or bathetic... Pathetic with a B. You know that word? It comes from the Greek root 'bathos'. Bathos is over the top emotional... We get criticized for it sometimes.

Girl: (interrupting) I'm from Vivo.com. Can I get a picture?

MATTHEW CAWS: I'm in the middle of a conversation, but we can do it real quick...

BRONQUES: Yeah. That's cool... (turning to her friend) Hey, who are you? Can I take your picture? (photoshoot ensues)