Despite being world-famous and on top of his musical craft as the lead singer of The Presidents of the United States of America, Seattle’s Chris Ballew felt unsatisfied. Something told him there was another style of art out there and the rock-and-roll he was playing wasn’t quite it.

Thankfully, for Ballew’s state of mind, he met his wife Kate Endle, whose visual artwork provided the inspiration for his new mode of songwriting, called kindie rock, and his new moniker, Caspar Babypants.

“Every adjective I used to describe her art I knew I wanted to use for my own music,” says Ballew. “Innocent, well-crafted, handmade, simple, skillfully constructed, folksy, bright – it was just everything I wanted.”

In 2009, Ballew released the first Caspar Babypants record, Here I Am!. In 2010, he and Endle were married at the Showbox in Seattle–with 1,200 strangers in attendance–between the end of a Presidents set and the encore.

Subsequent records have featured Jen Wood, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Stone Gossard and Krist Novoselic. But the essence of the project, Ballew says, is that he has control over the creation of the material he enjoys making.

“Primarily, it’s a DIY-solo-effort-kind-of-freedom,” he says. “If I want to do a show, I do it. If I don’t, then I don’t. Making the album is liberating – it might mean no guitar, or just flute and some drums, but nobody’s feelings are hurt. I’ve kind of come to realize that being in a collaborating relationship with others is kind of unnatural for me. It’s like if you saw a painter working on a painting and said, ‘I like that painting, can I paint on it too?’”

This isn’t to say, Ballew explains, that prior collaborations weren’t fruitful, “but predominately I have a vision and I want to execute it.” This month, he has released his second Beatles cover record, Beatles Baby!, which follows Baby Beatles! (released in 2013). His wife’s visual art, as always, is displayed on the cover.

“With these Beatles records,” he says, “I’m making them more for the parents than the kids. I actually consider myself a parents’ musician, but there’s no category for that so I call myself a kids’ musician.”

Ballew’s love affair with the Beatles began when he was just 2 years old, when he heard the band’s album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. “That album showed me how songs can transport the listener to atmospheres and places,” he says. “Really the making of these records is a respectful giving back to the source of my own creative impulses.”

In his kids’ music, Ballew doesn’t make “instruction songs” like how to count to 10, how to tie your shoe or how to cross the street. Instead they are songs that he hopes will “open” kids’ minds and “loosen” them from the world and go “somewhere impossible.”

Ballew has several new Caspar Babypants records currently in the works. He has about 85 percent of the next record and about 50 percent of the one following that. One track is a reinterpretation of “Pop Goes the Weasel,” in which a pop group in London is trying to keep up with the Beatles. Another describes him finding a tiny horse and not knowing what to do with it until he encounters a tiny cowboy.

To write these songs, Ballew and his wife riff and sing around the house or on walks, or sometimes he’ll pick up a guitar he hasn’t touched for six months and something will come out. He also likes to interpret nursery rhymes or folk music and personalize them. “If I want to keep going,” he says, “I’ve probably got 30 records in me.”

Ballew recently released ambient songs on chrisballew.org, which are free, and meant to be listened to during creative acts like writing or painting. “I make them for myself, really, and it’s insanely satisfying,” he says.

What does he do for fun when he’s away from music?

“I love a walk in the woods, like Schmitz Park in West Seattle. It’s a cool, old growth forest. I also watch a ton of movies and documentaries about artists and musicians. I’m a pretty simple man, I like to read, walk around and laugh at The Bachelor.”

To check out Caspar Babypants, see his live performance on KEXP: