Their first album, Greetings From California, is sonically two parts Beach Boys, one part the Clash and one part sounds that they worked hard to make sure no one had used before.

Radio.com caught up with Joel for a Proustian question and answer session, in which he talked the new album, Greetings From California, which comes out on September 16th and more.

What ideal are you most loyal to? Protecting the integrity of who you are and what makes you special. With this record we've been really protective of the integrity of the record and the music. And keeping it special. Making sure that it's unique, that every sound on the record has never been used before whether it's a guitar tone or whatever.

Musically it's very different for you, did you have to protect your ability to go in this direction? Yes, we had to protect the space that we were in to be able to create the record and not let anyone intrude on what we were doing for three years while we were making it. It was very important to us that we make sure we protected our ability to create it and not think about charts, what's in the radio, what we've done before, what people are going to think - all the different, hundreds of factors other people think about. We didn't want to because we don't believe in that stuff.