James McGovern (The Murder Capital)

"I have no rituals when it comes to writing. I don't want to think something can go wrong if things aren't set up the right way," says James McGovern of The Murder Capital. Indeed, that's the downside of a ritual: a fixed routine can limit your productivity when that routine isn't available. But McGovern does have one tiny "ritual" that I wholeheartedly endorse: writing the bad stuff before he gets to the good stuff.

And as an aside, any songwriter who references Yeats, Keats, and Heaney in one podcast is forever my hero.

The Murder Capital's latest album is Blindness