What’s your ideal office?
Probably just a beach, chilling. An office for me is literally just writing. My office is really weird, it’s usually in transient places. I really just do work when I travel from place to place.
How would you personally describe your music?
I would say it’s like that moment when you’re really sad and alone, but then suddenly you have an epiphany and you’re OK. My music doesn’t embody joy, it doesn’t comment on current affairs, but I think people relate to it because it’s a weird mix of my deepest, darkest thoughts and weird metaphors that sometimes work, sometimes don’t. I like to think of it as poetry, and maybe not music.
Do you consider your lyrics to be pointedly sex- positive, or are they just based on whatever you’re feeling at the time?
I think that sexuality is positive if you can stay true to yours. My lyrics are very guttural, and it’s me puking it up in the moment when I’m writing about it. Sexuality has always been my biggest struggle. It started off as the only thing that repressed me completely. I didn’t know that I was acting a fool because I wasn’t comfortable with who I was. I was a young girl who was having feelings for girls and growing up in a culture where I couldn’t express it, but then also whenever I was with guys, it just didn’t click. I really lived in between the idea of what I wanted and what I had, and music and writing helped me kind of throw it up.
What is your favorite track to dance to?
My favorite track of all time is Oblivion by Grimes. But it depends on my mood. I’ll put a lot of things on. I really love Abba! I get made fun of a lot for that. [laughs] My mom is part Swedish, so I think I may just be genetically prone to like Abba.
What would you do if the internet disappeared?
What I think is cool about the internet is that even though there’s so much judgment and hate, it’s also essentially nonexistent. It lives in my phone. When my phone dies during the day, that’s all gone. I think it’s important to separate yourself from the internet. So if it goes away, we would still be alive and breathing, and our blood would still be pumping.
What are you listening to right now?
All my friends are DJs, so I’ll listen to their playlists. I’ll listen to the Blood Orange album on repeat. I listen to a lot of No Doubt, a lot of shoegaze. I’m always listening to The Melvins. Sometimes I’ll put on classical music, I love the piano.
Do you play piano?
Yes, but not right now. My nails are too long.
What would you want to be reincarnated as?
Well this doesn’t really answer your question, but I think reincarnation is a beautiful thing. The one thing that terrifies me is death, and sometimes I’ll just lay in bed at night and think of all the bullshit that happened in my day, grudges that I have, things I think matter. But none of that matters. You just have to find what makes you happy. So I hope in a way that we’re all reincarnated.
You make a lot of your own beats. Would you call yourself a producer?
I think that anybody can make music these days, anyone can produce. Just get a metronome. So yeah, I produce, but I never really think about it. Sometimes I just need to make a beat that I can’t find anywhere else. With Hair Like Water, I made that beat because I was like, I really want a breakdown that sounds like an anime beat, and I also want a jungle drum. I couldn’t find one, so I just made it. It’s actually not that hard to learn. A lot of kids make beats well. And if you want to rap or you want to sing, and you think you can’t sing, you can still do it. It’s like art. If someone says, “Oh, I can’t draw,” it’s like—what, do you mean you can’t draw realistically? Then make an abstract painting! There’s no rules anymore..
