Friday afternoon sets at Coachella can be a blessing or a curse. The crowds aren’t as plentiful as they are during weekend (obviously), but that pales in comparison to what happened to Robert DeLong during his first Coachella experience. Nearly three years ago to the day, DeLong was playing a noon set in the Mojave tent to some stragglers before his half hour set was complete.

“I think the biggest difference was that the people who came out to see me are clearly a little bit more familiar with me,” the thin-rimmed sunglasses sporting, bleached blonde DeLong says.

Things are a bit different now.

A bit more established, the electro-alt-rock-producer has garnered recognition for his “Long Way Down.” The song has garnered him mainstream radio play and has seen him play in front of some his biggest crowds to date. Even with a relentless tour schedule, DeLong continues to write new music and hopes to have more material out sooner than later.

Following his late afternoon set on at the Outdoor Theater, we caught up with DeLong backstage to hear about his burgeoning career, why he ditched LA for Denver and what he likes to do in the Mile High City when he’s not making music.

Despite people being familiar with you more so now, what are other things you noticed today as compared to when you were last at Coachella?

They knew my logo: the X. But a “Long Way Down” created a general awareness since it’s on bigger stations. This year for me was a bigger difference in the sense that my show has changed a lot and my production has stepped up a lot. I added a system of ramps; I had some guest artists like Kamasi Washington and Lindsey Sterling, who I produced a few tracks for.

What’s the biggest difference between producing something for Sterling versus making your own material?

When you’re producing for someone else, you have to consider what it is they do, what things they like. It’s like what do you want, let’s see if I can do that and hopefully I have the skill set to get there. When I’m producing stuff for myself, a lot more times it’s more experimental and messing around with stuff until I arrive at something interesting.

Which do you find more challenging?

Producing for myself. I’m always unhappy with everything. I think you’re always your own worst critic. Also when you think about it, it’s your own name on it and you have to think about it a lot more than when you’re making something for somebody else.

There was a nice chunk of time between your releases. What were you up to? 

I’m always constantly writing and I was on tour from 2013 to now. I haven’t stopped, and I think maybe in the past three years if you added up the amount of time I’ve had off, it’s probably been only three and a half months. It’s been nonstop, which is a great problem to have, obviously.

You’ve seen your crowds grow by a tremendous amount since then. You were just at the Fonda in LA, which was a huge step up.

It’s been amazing. That was cool in LA, but especially playing in Buffalo, where I’d never been before, I sold out a thousand person room, which is crazy to me. The crowd was very young there and very pumped up.

Is there pressure to play the familiar material in cities like that?

When I’m doing headlining tours, I still only have two records out so I can pretty much play all of my music. I tailor my sets based on however I feel that day, but it doesn’t change too much. To be honest, when you’re playing to crowds that have come to you via the radio, they tend to know two-to-three songs max. It’s almost like an evangelist set where you’re introducing them to the rest of your material.

Why did you leave LA for Denver? 

I travel so much all the time and Denver is very central. I love skiing and I love hiking. I’m an outdoorsy guy, and I like all of that kind of shit. I grew up in Seattle, so I have that cold weather in me. To be fair, I’ve only lived there for two months and knowing that I’d be traveling somewhere soon. It’s definitely cheaper than living in LA, and it’s an up-and-coming city. There’s so much hip stuff going on. Every band that comes through LA comes through Denver now. We got Red Rocks, which is cool and I’ve hiked around it.