After all these years, Cashmere Cat is still shy. The musician born Magnus August Høiberg has nearly a decade of prismatic productions under his belt, which has led to appearances on the big stages at EDM festivals, collaborations with childhood heroes, and studio time with the biggest pop stars in the world. On some level, Høiberg has had to adjust to the practicalities that this success requires. He once wouldn’t even do in-person interviews, but a few years ago he finally decided to open up about his life story in a music video. One would imagine he’s no longer hiding in a bathroom, as a friend of his once described, when DJ Khaled unexpectedly turns up at the studio.

But as he’s explained in the press materials for his new solo album, Princess Catgirl, he’s been unable to fully shake his reserved nature. To deal with all the attention, he decided to enlist some help from a cartoon cat: Princess Catgirl, the “face” of his music. “She makes me feel safe,” he says. That’s why the last couple of Cashmere Cat music videos have featured an animated cat with a shock of blue hair and traditional Norwegian dress, dancing in desolate locales. She’s the voice, Høiberg implies, behind the chipmunked vocal mutations that are all over this record.

The idea that Høiberg has taken to collaborating with a Catsune Miku of sorts may seem like a silly concept, but it’s telling of where his head is these days. On 9, his debut full-length, he capitalized on his reputation for futuristic pop music. He called up famous friends like Ariana Grande and Camila Cabello to make a brash, extroverted version of his pillowy, reverberant beats. On Princess Catgirl, he’s largely backed off from that approach. There are collaborators here—Benny Blanco, Tory Lanez, SOPHIE, and Francis Starlite, among others, make appearances. But it’s Høiberg and Catgirl that take top billing, an indication that things are more personal and introspective this time around, which has always been his sweet spot.

When the excesses of the EDM boom were at their garish peak, Cashmere Cat’s productions were soft and intimate. Even if they were playful enough to allow him access to that scene, he wasn’t making music for the ragers. “When I was making that music I was thinking more of a girl or a boy alone in their bedroom listening to it than a crowd full of people going insane,” he said in 2017. The seven songs on Princess Catgirl are a return to that fantasy. He favors comfy stuff, textures that you can luxuriate in and use to shut out the outside world. You can hear it in the way the gentle chimes of “EMOTIONS” swell into cloudy, shoegaze-y squalls that sound a little like Slowdive’s electronic experiments or the digital gusts of M83’s early works. “WITHOUT YOU” has a more standard pop structure, but it too is muted and diffuse—a low-lit reimagining of the neon sounds Høiberg might use on his higher-profile collaborations.

The contributions that Høiberg would presumably ascribe to Catgirl herself are minimal but still important to the overall feeling of the record. Throughout there are digital voices that sound conscripted both from twisted samples of pop hits and Vocaloid-like software. Their messages are often limited to just a word or two, but they feel forlorn and weighty nonetheless. The vocals on “FOR YOUR EYES ONLY” and “WITHOUT YOU” resonate with a gravity and tenderness that Høiberg doesn’t always squeeze out of his human collaborators. Even if she’s not real, the feelings “she” expresses definitely are. And if Høiberg needs to pretend that he’s collaborating with an animated cat to access them, then long live the Princess.