"There’s something deeply punk about learning an ancient martial art via YouTube at 3 a.m.”

It’s hard to get a bead on who Kevin Morby really is. Sincere and sardonic, drywitted and slyly funny, he’s more prone to an arched eyebrow than a grand gesture. You could say he’s a protean character in the American indie folk landscape: a modern troubadour with one Blundstone boot in classic Americana and the other in existential poetry. But who knows what protean is? And Morby has been known to wear a chic pair of black Mary Jane T-straps at times, so even talking about boots would be wrong. Moreover, he moves through the world like a character in a YA novel, a little anxious, a little restless, always searching for something—the kind of guy who would play Jared Leto’s best friend on My So-Called Life. With his ’90s thrift-store glam, a tangle of unruly curls, and that still, still, unwavering gaze, you know he’s just not like the rest of us. Even he doesn’t think so.