Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast) with Alex Cameron

Each summer, Pitchfork Music Festival brings to Chicago musical legends, the hottest new acts, and the artists that are about to become your new favorites. And for the past four years, Talkhouse has been backstage to record these artists in conversation.

Over the coming weeks, we'll be bringing you the rad episodes we cut at the fest last month, including:

— Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold x Nilüfer Yanya

— Blood Orange's Dev Hynes x Raphael Saadiq

— Tierra Whack x Nnamdi Ogbonnaya

— Zola Jesus x Circuit des Yeux

— Vagabon's Lætitia Tamko x Julie Byrne

This week, we kick off our series of Pitchfork Fest episodes with Japanese Breakfast's Michelle Zauner talking with Alex Cameron. Alex and Michelle chop it up about a lot, including their onstage electrocutions, the triumphs and tribulations of the hometown gig, Michelle's future music production goals, the massive on-stage panic attack that nearly ended Alex's career, and his collaborator Brandon Flowers’ extremely unorthodox way of recording The Killers’ vocals.

Check it out, and subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.

— Elia Einhorn, Talkhouse Podcast host and producer

This episode was produced by Mark “North Side” Yoshizumi.

Big thanks to Pitchfork Music Festival for hosting Talkhouse, and to Karolina Barej for all of her coordinating work.

The Talkhouse Podcast's theme song is “Plastic Man vs. the Giant Red Phase of the Sun” by Iced Ink.