There was more than an air of mystery surrounding David Lynch’s revival of Twin Peaks—it was an impenetrable fog. But curious fans of the original series and of the mythology that both Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost continued to build around the world of Laura Palmer, Agent Cooper, and the Black Lodge had one primer to go on: Frost’s 2016 novel, The Secret History of Twin Peaks. In that book, one alluring new character takes center stage: Agent Tamara Preston, who appears on almost every page. Twin Peaks fans had no idea who would be playing Preston in the new series until Episode 3, when singer, model, and actress Chrysta Bell showed up to debrief Lynch’s Agent Gordon Cole and Miguel Ferrer’s Agent Albert Rosenfield. We may not know much about the rest of Twin Peaks: The Return, but we can count on Agent Preston—who serves as something of an Agent Cooper proxy—to feature prominently for the rest of the season. How, though, did the actress land such a plum role?

Though her name may not have immediately popped against the rest of the Twin Peaks revival’s starry cast list, David Lynch devotees will recognize Chrysta Bell (full, first, and only name) as the writer/director’s longtime musical collaborator. The pair met in the late ’90s when she, then a jazz/swing singer, was chasing dreams of becoming the next Vonda Shepard from Ally McBeal. She met Lynch through a series of agents and managers and it was musical love at first sight. “The first time I saw [Bell} perform, I thought she was like an alien. The most beautiful alien ever,” Lynch said in 2016. “I had to kiss a lot of frogs to find that,” Chrysta Bell tells VF.com during a recent phone call. They released two “dream pop” albums, This Train (2011) and Somewhere in the Nowhere (2016). But not even Chrysta Bell suspected Lynch would tap her to take on her first major acting gig in his Twin Peaks revival—let alone in such a pivotal role. Though Chrysta Bell, like the rest of the cast, is sworn to Peaks-ian secrecy, she did hop on the phone to discuss her new album, We Dissolve, as well as Agent Tamara Preston’s most memorable on-screen moment thus far.

Vanity Fair: Given your longstanding collaboration with Lynch, I imagine you weren’t made to jump through the same audition hoops as some other people in the cast.

Chrysta Bell: [laughing] I think my audition lasted about 19 years!

Yes, maybe more hoops than anyone.

If anyone had to work for their part, let me just tell you. I had no idea David was going to ask me to be in Twin Peaks. I did not know that our collaboration would extend beyond music, and I didn’t honestly dare to dream. But David knew what he was getting with me, you know, because we’ve been pals for many, many years. Plus David’s one of those people—if intuition were a muscle, his would be really big and strong. And he uses it a lot. And so he was flexing his intuition muscle and fortunately I was uplifted in the process.

Most F.B.I. agents on TV, even someone like Dana Scully from The X-Files, have a really drab sense of style. But not Agent Preston. How much say did you get in creating her look?

You’re the first person to ask me about this. Nancy Steiner is the style maven for the show, and we probably tried on, oh I don’t know, 50 shirts before we hit gold. The skirt probably took like, seven to nine incarnations before we realized we wanted to get a nice kind of high waist on it. But finally we were able to hone in on the fact that David wanted a retro look for the undershirt and tops. He liked the crêpe and the silks and the lace—but the kind of more vintage-looking lace. It was kind of desolate there for a while, but that was definitely David’s idea and David’s vision for Tammy’s look and we worked to find it.