AGE: 21.

BORN & BASED: Portland, Oregon.

TITLING HER ALBUM BELLADONNA OF SADNESS: Actually, I changed the name so much. I came up with it when I saw this Japanese anime film from 1973; it was about witchcraft. So I named it after that and really fell in love with it.

THE MOVE TO L.A.: I moved to an apartment in Hollywood behind a strip club called the Seventh Veil. It was terrifying. I got signed about a month later. I moved immediately. Those first couple months were very hot—[it was the] first time I’ve ever been hot in my life.

When I was in L.A. I felt like I was missing out on everything because I never connected. I tried to be a part of the whole social thing and get in all the groups, but it was really anticlimactic for me. It was weird. At first I didn’t understand, because I had only ever met real people that genuinely wanted to talk to you because they liked you. And so when I went to L.A. and everybody was like, “So, what do you do?” I thought they were actually interested.

BEING A PRODUCT: It’s hard to have people try to mold you into a version of what they find sellable, or a version of somebody else, or a version of everybody else. When I was 16 I went to a record label … I did a showcase and sang them three of my songs. Afterwards they sat me on a stool and asked me, “Do you want to be like Pink or Katy Perry?” And I thought, “Oh, what have I gotten myself into?” After that I was going to dedicate myself to be whatever I was going to be—into my own mold. I figured the only way I can do that is to just do everything myself, and to have it be what it is instead of having to conceptualize it.

DIRECTING THE VIDEO FOR “SHADES”: I recorded it with a camcorder and edited it myself—that’s why it’s so shitty. [laughs] … I had no concept. It wasn’t like, “Oh, what aspect of this was inspired by the song?” or anything. It was just that my best friend and I wanted to go to Death Valley for free. I was like, “I can write this off on my taxes!” So we went to Goodwill and bought a cheap suit and a wig.

AN EARLY START: I was in a theater production called The Wiz, Wicked, and The Wizard of Oz. It was a medley of the three The Wizard of Oz tales. I always did musical theater—actually, I wrote a play when I was 12, which was very Margot Tenenbaum of me. [laughs] I don’t remember what it was called, but it was about my parents’ divorce, on accident. … My dad [also] got me a ukulele, or maybe it was for my brother. I would never play the ukulele now, but when I was 14 it was great. I wrote a song called “Lazy Daisy Crazy.”