Music: Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold on indie stardom, songwriting and protest folk

Not many bands experience the opportunities Fleet Foxes have -- and even fewer deliver on them. But the Seattle-based group has managed to skirt the many pitfalls of modern indie music, including the always-frothing blogosphere.

Instead, it's been win after win. In 2006, their self-released debut EP attracted bigwig label Sub Pop. In 2008, their much-hyped full-length "Fleet Foxes" racked up accolades, eventually selling more than 400,000 copies in the U.S. alone. This spring they cleared yet another hurdle, with their sophomore LP, "Helplessness Blues," debuting at No. 4 on the Billboard charts. The unassuming sextet hasn't ascended with the grandiosity of Arcade Fire or the stylistic worldliness of Vampire Weekend. Its formula has been modest from the outset: earnest folk accented by gorgeous vocal harmonies and touches of psychedelia, all underpinned by strong songwriting.

We caught up with Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold prior to his band's State Theatre gig this Sunday. He talked about managing indie-rock stardom, his darker new album and -- of course -- Lady Gaga's role as the new Pete Seeger.

Q: How much pressure did you feel leading up to "Helplessness Blues"?

A: I think it was mostly personal pressure. We looked at it as a sequel, not as a completely different thing. We were as aware of the negative reviews as the positive; it wasn't as if we felt the first [album] was some gold standard of excellence.

Q: How has your lyric-writing process evolved over the past few years?

A: With ["Fleet Foxes"], I don't feel much for the songs lyrically aside from a couple. I think touring that first record as much as we did made me want to write stuff that's a little more from the gut. So that was conscious. I didn't want to back out there with another set of oblique strategies. Some of [the new material] is sorta self-actualizing in terms of writing about the inability to be present for people in your life who love you. And ... I don't know ... also I feel just a bit useless.

A: Personally, it's just such a nonfactor and it's not the goal. Like, we were just on the cover of Spin. But because it's a six-member band and they hadn't sold the ads for a fold-out, it had to be just me on the cover. And I was really uncomfortable with that, but [Sub Pop] was like "This'll be our first-ever Spin cover!" Outside from the great, big bands like Radiohead or Arcade Fire, I don't think we're looking to what's selling as the best. That's just a really slippery metric, you know what I mean?

Q: Do you consider what you do "folk"?

A: I think on this one definitely. ["Fleet Foxes"] was more of a poppy record. ["Helplessness Blues" is] more in line with a folk ideal; it's not just modern rock with acoustic guitars or something.

Q: Will the band ever dip into the rich protest history of folk?

A: That's part of a bigger conversation about the utility of music, if there is any more at all. If Lady Gaga had not put all the other demographic groups into "Born This Way" -- and it was just about gay empowerment -- that would have been a protest song, and in a lot of ways it still is. But I don't know. If there was a cause we felt really, really passionate about we'd totally do that. It's not off the table, but sometimes it smacks of self-importance. Also, it'd have to be topical. With "Helplessness Blues," I was writing it during the BP oil spill and it partly inspired some of the lyrics. But put any reference to "the oil spill" in there and a year later it's way old news.