Greg Mendez has a shelved album concept that he says you can have if you're a songwriter. The plan was to center each song around the rhythm of a different car's turn signal, and the title of the song would simply be the car's name (so "2003 Honda Accord," for example.) It never came to fruition of course, but it illustrates Mendez's hyperfocus on his environment as he mines for song ideas.

Mendez's latest album is Beauty Land.

The formula is simple. Step one, read great Irish literature. Step two, write killer songs. It's worked pretty well for Euan Manning of Cardinals so far. The Irish songwriter for the Cork-based band rattles off writers who have influenced him, and my god does he have impeccable taste: Flann O'Brien, Martin McDonagh, Kevin Barry, among others. As I always say, a clear through line travels from reading great writing to writing great words.

The debut album by Cardinals is Masquerade.

"A great way to write is to overwrite. Write more verses than could be contained in a song. Then take the best of what's there," says Rostam Batmanglij. I cannot agree more: good writers know that the first pass is never the time to decide what to keep and what to leave out. Overwriting will always be faster. Just ask Anne Lamott.

Of course, overwriting for Rostam comes easy because when he's not writing, he's thinking about writing. "I'm always collecting building blocks," he says. "Lots of kernels all the time. I've never truly let go of an idea."

Rostam's latest album is American Stories.