Ben Lee, 'Pointless Beauty' (Interface)

When last we spoke with Ben Lee, the Aussie singer-songwriter was wrapping up his eighth album, 'Deeper Into Dream,' which he released on Oct. 11 by Dangerbird Records.

Several months later, we invited the soft-spoken 33-year-old into our Los Angeles studio to perform songs from the album, and talked with him about his impact on the world, shooting comedy videos with wife Ione Skye and Margaret Cho, and how fatherhood and the death of his therapist have influenced his career.

"The dark stuff is more probably just to do with the death of my therapist and actually processing that death and allowing sadness, grief and mourning to be part of the musical texture and not to push that stuff aside in favor of being positive. Which has often been a fall-back way of conducting myself."