After the release of 2019’s Be The Cowboy, a thrilling art-pop collection featuring starkly comic reflections on love and loneliness, Mitski announced that she was quitting music. Still under contract for one more album, however, she began work on Laurel Hell – and, as it turns out, she still has a lot more to say.

Released today, Laurel Hell sees the 31-year-old Japanese-American musician grapple with fame and her stratospheric rise to indie stardom. Channelling an effervescent 80s energy, the album moves between maximalist pop to synth-heavy ballads and orchestral stints. “I don’t want to make another Be the Cowboy,” she previously said. “I didn’t want to make music that was putting up walls against the listener.”

Mitski quit social media after the release of Be the Cowboy – her management posts on her behalf. But that hasn’t stopped her songs finding a new audience on TikTok. Back in June, a trend went viral featuring people literally running away from their problems to her 2018 single “Nobody” – though Mitski doesn’t quite get it herself. “I don’t get what everyone’s running away from, I don’t think it’s that scary,” she tells us. 

In an exclusive video with Dazed, the indie pop sensation gives us the A-Z on her life and career thus far, from her love of animals (“I think they’re too good for us”) to her full-blown obsession with ghost stories and haunted houses. She also talks about her favourite Studio Ghibli film (“I just love Castle in the Sky”) and which character she relates to most: “Realistically, I would be No Face.”

Watch the video below for Dazed’s guide to Mitski.