Avalon Emerson has spent years building a reputation as one of the world's most respected DJs and electronic music producers, known for marathon sets in dance music hubs like San Francisco and Berlin. But with her indie-pop band, The Charm, she set out to do something very different: make songs with friends.

Avalon Emerson & The Charm's latest album is Written into Changes. Today, Avalon talks about stepping away from the solitary world of electronic production, learning to write songs with a little help from Jeff Tweedy's How to Write One Song, and how building The Charm ultimately deepened her connection to DJing and reshaped the way she thinks about making music.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.