SFBG: I didn't get to talk to you when your last album, Under the Blacklight, came out so this probably sounds like ancient history, but what was the band's intention with that album?

BS: Well I think we wanted to try to explore some stuff we hadn't, musically and thematically. I think we wanted the music to have more form, to be a little more classic and traditional, rather than winding, seven -minute songs with epic bridges. We wanted to format stuff that we have done in the past. We still love that stuff but wanted to go for a more traditional, classic sound - more in line with stuff we grew up listening to as kids.

SFBG: What did you listen to as kids?

BS: My dad was super into the BeeGees and I always heard the BeeGees and the Beatles around the house. Also, the Grateful Dead and Fleetwood Mac. There was a version that didn't come out, a better version of "The Angels Hung Around" that was more, like, late-'80s, weird Grateful Dead - like "Touch of Grey."

SFBG: Any plans for the live show, this time?

BS: We all have our ideas and then come to the rehearsal space and share them with each other, and based on that, we make a set and conceive of it then.

SFBG: How is the band sorting out the sideprojects from the group projects? You're in the Elected and Jenny Lewis has her solo album and show...

BS: I don't know really. We just do it. People get bummed sometimes. Solo projects can be, like, threatening to people. In the beginning at least when I made my project, some people got bummed. How do we do it? We’re just always writing songs and there are too many songs for one band - they spill out into other projects.

SFBG: Got another Elected album coming?

BS: Yeah, probably - I'm halfway through one. I have this other project that I'm creating right now: Oaxaca. It's kind of weird dance music like Tom Tom Club meets early Mariah Carey. Not the late stuff, considering how she's sold out. The early shit, the early years, when she was wet behind the ears.

SFBG: No afropop involved?

BS: That's more meandering - this is more like songs. I'd like to do afropop because that shit sounds easy. No disrespect to Fela Kuti, because I'm a huge fan but it doesn't sound like even Femi Kuti.

SFBG: Earth Day is coming up - any green thoughts?

BS: Well, instead of buying plastic cups, you can buy cornstarch cups. They look and feel and behave the same, but they're biodegradable.

I'm almost like that guy Ed Begley Jr., bugging people to get solar panels. I would have liked us to have made our record carbon neutral, but we didn't, and that was disappointing to me. Maybe I didn't take a hard enough stance on it. You gotta pick your battles in a band...

SFBG: What do you end up battling up?

BS: Supernice hotels kind of bum me out. I want to stay at shitty hotels. But not a lot of battling goes on, though I guess I should have battled for that, the carbon neutral thing. The cornstarch cup thing I got from my bassist, so he's pretty green, i think.

SFBG: What's next for you?

BS: Jenny's working on a solo record. I'm working on that Oaxaca record, and I just wrote and directed a short film, Water Pills - it's those things that make you pee and stuff. I went to college for filmmaking and in high school and college I did it a lot. I'd like to go back and do that stuff again so I gave it a shot and got actors together [including, word has it, Winona Ryder] and cameras and wrote and directed it. I'm editing right now.

SFBG: Congratulations.

BS: Don't congratulate me yet - it could be a piece of shit.

RILO KILEY
With Whispertown 2000 and Michael Runion
Thurs/17, 8 p.m., $31.50
SF Design Center Concourse
620 Seventh St., SF
(415) 421-TIXS