Pitchfork: Your lyrics touch on devastating issues—global warming, the apocalypse—but your records have become increasingly lush and beautiful. Do you view your music as escapist?

Weyes Blood: I want people to think about the reality of what’s going on but also to feel a sense of belonging and hope and purpose. I want to make sure everybody feels like they deserve to be alive, because in recent times I’ve had some close friends who have not felt that, and some have even taken their own life. I’m speaking to anybody who feels overwhelmed by the sheer mass of all these problems. I hope you could have a smile during the apocalypse and be grateful for whatever conditions exist, because life is a beautiful thing.

Has expressing hope through your work gotten harder as the world has gotten, you know, worse?

It actually gets a little easier because I kick into gear. For me, the hardest time in terms of climate change was when Al Gore released [An Inconvenient Truth]. Before that, there was this little bit of hope that it wasn’t real, that it all could be changed, that it was blown out of proportion. But that documentary rocked my fucking boat so hard, and I just knew, deep down in my heart, that things were never going to be the same. That the comfort of my childhood in the ’90s, just assuming the coral reefs were going to be there for my children—or even the fact that I should have kids—that whole foundation was rocked. It was almost this loss of innocence, like getting kicked out of the garden of Eden.

So once Trump showed up and all this shit started happening, I was already prepared for the worst. But I feel like I keep getting better at the “hope” thing, like it’s a muscle I have to exercise. And a lot of people have been kicked into gear because of this presidency—there’s a lot more education and anger than there was just five years ago. I’m so fucking stoked about the kids that are protesting [to fight climate change] in Belgium during school, I could almost cry.