Steel Train's Jack Antonoff Gets Friendly With Scarlett Johansson

Jack Antonoff calls it therapy. When the Steel Train singer and songwriter invited a dozen or so female artists to rerecord every song from his band's June-released self-titled album, the result gave him tremendous insight into his own artistic process.

"It's very exciting to hear these versions, because it's the first time that I've been able to hear anything I've done from the outside," Antonoff tells Spinner. "When it's me doing my songs, there's always a level of self-loathing that plays into it. But I can actually listen to this from the outside and it's allowed me to hear our record more fully. That's a cultural side effect, finding therapy in everything."

The result was the killer companion album 'Terrible Thrills Vol. 1' (Terrible Thrills is the band's own label), which includes contributions from Tegan and Sara, Scarlett Johansson, Angel Deradoorian of Dirty Projectors and Amanda Palmer. Insight aside, Antonoff also gained head-turning takes of his songs, such as his old high school sweetheart Johansson's interpretation of Steel Train's emo-ish rocker 'Bullet.' The Golden Globe-winning actress turns the song into a breathy, poignant slow-dance. "I'm a huge fan of her as an artist. I admire her as a musician and love her voice," he says. "It was beyond our control what she was going to do with the song. I could never have imagined it this way."

"Some were friends, some weren't, but they are all people who have inspired our songs," Antonoff goes on about the stellar collective he was lucky enough to land. "She's a friend, has been for a while," he quietly adds of Johansson. Their break-up was reportedly documented via songs on Steel Train's 2005 debut 'Twilight Tales From the Prairies of the Sun.' "For the companion record, the point was for people to hear our songs by the people who inspired them. That could be friends or people we didn't know at all. Scarlett happened to be a friend."