Rather than adapting its characters, Royer draws on the theatrics around performing and the ways it can shift identity. Her mysterious constructed character, named Angel Jane in the song, commands the microphone before something begins to feel off: the faces staring back are suddenly unfamiliar and, soon, she’s stranded in the spotlight, looking to the “stage cues” to tell her what she’s meant to be. The accompanying video extends that fascination with inhabiting different roles. Inspired by a photograph Jim Jarmusch posted of an abandoned box of shoes, it sees Royer trying on different pairs before taking the stage in angel wings. Trying on somebody else’s shoes becomes a literal expression of the different roles we inhabit.

For Royer, that visual extension is inseparable from the fun of making records. “In an ideal world, every single song would just have a music video, but there’s no money for that,” she laughs. Visuals, she says, offer “a really fun and special way to be able to visually communicate what your songs are about, which I think is sometimes easier than talking about it.” When I bring up her tongue-in-cheek description of being caught between pop, indie and the art world, as referenced in “Sold out the jazz club” she quickly zooms outward from her own career. “We live in postmodernity,” she argues. “Everyone’s cross-referencing, everyone has this wealth of references to draw upon,” she adds, before wondering aloud what innovation even looks like under those circumstances.

An example she cites is a track by Shoreline Mafia’s Phoenix Flexin, “Rubberz,” which had recently caught her attention. Delving into ’80s disco-style with a voice and sound that did not resemble Flexin’s previous hip hop sound, prompted online speculation about generative AI, which the artist vehemently denied, and, of course, generated further discourse about artists using AI in this way to boost publicity for their tracks. Royer doesn’t express much interest in litigating whether the song actually used AI, but rather what the conversation says about originality. It leaves Royer deliberately unresolved: “I get nervous because I’m hesitant to say, ‘Oh, there’s absolutely no innovation right now, and everything’s just post-postmodern,’ because it makes me sound jaded and cynical, when I’m actually not,” she says.