She emigrated to the United States with her family at 13. She wanted to go to music school, but got “a hard no” from her parents. Figuring there were jobs in the field, she studied and then worked at electrical and computer engineering. She also taught herself to play instruments, write songs, engineer and produce music.

During that time Tamko fled what she called, unwilling to be more specific, “a toxic physical space” where “there just was abuse all around me,” she said. “I couldn’t really understand how to get out of it, and also how to not feel guilty if I left. The first record, I’m talking about all of those things.”

The trauma also reinforced her inclination to go it alone. “Music was the only form of healing that I had available to me and I had to create it,” she said. “I think part of my stubbornness about autonomy is saying, like, ‘What if everyone decides they’re not going to help you any more? Can you do it again?’ I created my own world. I created my own safe place.”

She found an audience online and in Brooklyn, regularly playing do-it-yourself venues like Silent Barn and the whimsically named Shea Stadium. By the time she polished her first set of songs to release as “Infinite Worlds,” her fans included fellow musicians like Mitski and Tegan and Sara, who took her on tour as an opening act.

But even as she was performing songs from “Infinite Worlds,” Tamko was contemplating changes in her music. The initial buzz over the album, which was released on the independent Father/Daughter Records, got Vagabon courted by major labels. She chose to sign with Nonesuch, the proudly eclectic label with a catalog that includes classical music, jazz, the Buena Vista Social Club and the Black Keys.