Less than a week after finishing her freshman year at Syracuse University, the singer, songwriter and producer Claire Cottrill, who performs as Clairo, was in the back seat of a chauffeured S.U.V., eating Chick-fil-A and living out the surprising mundanity of her music-industry dreams.

“I’m literally the most inexperienced person,” Ms. Cottrill, 19, said, reflecting giddily on the series of firsts that had greeted her in Manhattan after final exams.

As an emerging artist with a viral song (“Pretty Girl”) and a fresh phalanx of devoted personnel (manager, publicist, label), Clairo was spending two days performing the awkward get-to-know-you dance with publications, agents and streaming services such as Spotify that will, ideally, be partners on her path to fame. But while such glad-handing can quickly become a chore, Ms. Cottrill was bubbling with wide-eyed possibility, like Charlie on his golden-ticket tour, even as she was asked to fire finger-guns into a camera for promotional GIFs.

In the elevator down from a SiriusXM interview, during which she’d picked nervously at the sleeve of her Palace sweater, Ms. Cottrill, who is often mistaken for a precocious middle schooler, grew teary-eyed at the genuine interest being shown in her work. “I feel like a little star right now,” she said.