When you’re in a touring band, you tend to get asked the same half-dozen questions to the point of exhaustion, and if you go around giving your records names like He Poos Clouds, as Owen Pallet did with this year’s Final Fantasy release, you only encourage such questions. In order to give the guy a break from poo-related queries, we gave the singer/violinist the opportunity to geek out, New York Press-style, and talk about one of his other passions: videogames, and of course the RPG that gave his project its name.

NYP: There are some rumors floating around the Internet that you’ve never played Final Fantasy before.

Owen Pallet: That’s not true. I have played the game. I really like Final Fantasy VI—it’s just that I’m not an obsessed fan, that’s all. People think I named myself after the game because of my fandom, but it’s meant to put the music very firmly into the realm of unrealism. It’s unrealistic that a band would be named after a videogame, because videogames aren’t often the subject of tributes, because they’re not really recognized as a viable art form.

Are you more into the older stuff, game-wise?

I respect the videogame as a method for the artistic process, so I’m drawn in particular to games in which there are flashes of originality, which challenge your brain to think in new ways. Tetris is one of them, but there are lots of new ones as well. My favorite new game is the space shoot-em-up, like Gradius. Games that allow the programmers the most leeway to be artistic, as the enemies and landscapes reveal themselves to the players, and makes the programmer a choreographer and architect.

Is there less room for people to express themselves, now that these games are huge productions?

No more than a Hollywood film, but there has been, over the years—since film has been around so long—a nice network of independent filmmaking. That doesn’t really exist that much for artists who want to go into videogames. Right now when you put the words “artist” and “videogame” together, you get hackers, who are kind of subverting the entire genre, as opposed to trying to create artistic expression in the medium. Videogames are so expensive to make, and there is so much money to be made in them, that I feel there are very few videogame programmers who could qualify as artists. I think Team Echo is a good example and the company that made Gradius V and Contra C is pretty artistic, but both of those companies function pretty independently, like the M. Night Shyamalan of the programming industry.

The sometimes Arcade Fire member will be casting a level-four rock spell—with his unique brand of fantastic indie baroque pop—on an unsuspecting venue near you.

August 31. Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (at Ave. A), 212-260-4700; 9:30, $10.