For “Sleeping Beauty” she worked with producer Danio Forni, while the song features She Drew The Gun’s Louisa Roach. “I've always admired Lou. I think she's amazing,” says McCool. 

Another prominent collaboration is with Manchester artist Renee Stormz. On the pivotal track “So Lonely Lonely” her vocal juxtaposes with McCool’s rich pop swoon, a sharp injection of momentum. “I really struggled to place someone on that because I knew I wanted a female vocalist and maybe like a bit of a harder vocalist - more like spoken, maybe not sung,” she says. “I was really struggling to find someone who I thought was cool and then, just on Instagram, stumbled across Renee. I could just hear her voice on it.”

The track helps transition the record from its brighter and more immediate first side into a darker, introspective second half. “I think I was just in a big experimental phase coming off the back of that show, but then I really liked the breadth of the material,” she explains. “I was like, maybe there's like a distinctive two sides to it, like you would have on a vinyl.”

Across the album, McCool brings together a bright array of diverse voices and sonic textures to create a record that balances her own creative instincts with a passionate collaborative spirit. Bringing everything together with her direct style of writing, she contextualises the songs with the album’s titular joie de vive. “That was actually really straightforward for me because there are commonalities with the things that I do write about. I do write a lot about discovery, self-discovery, almost like making peace with yourself,” she explains. “I think that's a big theme across all the songs, is like the becoming of self and just acknowledging who you are.”