[on how he found time to write new material for a new album while on tour for "Night Visions"] Fortunately for me, since I was young, my favorite hobby and pastime has always been writing. Even before I was in a band, I would come home from school, sit down on my computer and record. When I'm out on the road, I'm not much of a party animal. So when a show finishes, typically, I'm back at my hotel room. Opposed to going out to a bar or something like that, I typically sit in my room and pull out my laptop and record. That's always been kind of a therapeutic thing for me. It's like at the end of the day, some people read their book. I just love to write -- it's kind of like my journal entry at the end of each night.

[on if he knew "Radioactive" would be such a hit] I honestly can tell you that we had no idea what people would think. I knew that it was a reactionary song. That's why we put it first on the record, because we wanted you to turn on this record and be like, "Whoa, this is really strange. I haven't heard anything that sounds like this." For all I knew, people would hate it -- and some people do hate it. It's a divisive song. As a band, I'd rather be that than be kind of boring or just create something that just all sounds the same.

[on how albums "Night Visions" and "Smoke + Mirrors" compare] The (new) record is very different than "Night Visions". I think "Night Visions", when I listen to it, sounds like Imagine Dragons five years ago, which was when we wrote that record. I think "Smoke + Mirrors" is definitely a more raw record. There are a lot of imperfections in it, which we kind of accepted about ourselves and embraced. Lyrically, it's a much more introverted record for me. With "Smoke + Mirrors", I really tried to just open up a little more -- and kind of go places that I've been afraid of going. The whole record is really a raw record, which I'm really proud of, you know? But it was scary for me.