Sydney Bennett works well with others. The 26-year-old Los Angeles–born-and-based singer-songwriter (who releases music under the name Syd) broke into the public consciousness at the turn of the decade as the sole female member of Odd Future, but even back then, Bennett had other projects on the back burner—when she wasn’t working with the Tyler, the Creator–helmed hip-hop crew in their halcyon days, Bennett was writing smooth R&B songs in her spare time. This side hustle eventually gave way to The Internet, the L.A.-based neo-soul group that she fronts alongside Matt Martians, Patrick Paige II, Christopher Smith, and Steve Lacy, who just released their fourth studio album, Hive Mind, last week.

So Syd’s a team player, but she’s garnered acclaim for her solo work as well: Last year she released her debut album Fin, which found the queer artist subtly reworking the often heteronormative tropes of R&B and firming up her songwriting skills in the process. “I think my solo album made me really excited to explore new sounds with the band,” Syd says. “I get tired of things quickly, so I didn’t want to make another album like Fin. It just gave me more excitement and appreciation for what we have as a group.”

Hive Mind is The Internet’s first release since 2015’s Ego Death, after which each member of the band released their own solo projects. As Syd describes it, Martians came up with the name for Hive Mind while he was reading a comic book. “It makes a lot of sense, just being that a hive mind is just a collective of like-minded individuals who are really strong on their own, but when they come together to think as one, they can take over the universe,” Syd says. “That’s kind of what we did—we did our solo albums, saw what we could do on our own, and now we’ve come back together. Now we can all show, ‘I put my album out by myself,’ and now coming together, we each bring a lot more to the table.”

In addition to her role as frontwoman, this album cycle found Syd taking on even more behind-the-scenes responsibilities, which originated in her desire to take more control over her public image—she made her directorial debut with the music video for one of the album’s singles, “Come Over,” which found each member of the band donning distinct primary color outfits in their bedrooms and jamming together in a garage. “I think I see myself differently than most people see me,” Syd says. “I would have a lot of issues with different angles and clips that [video directors] would choose to put in edits. . . . I think everybody, for the most part, struggles with how they see themselves versus how the world perceives them. I struggle with that a lot, especially with being androgynous.” Syd began to increasingly request to sit in during the editing process of the group’s music videos, but over the years she took matters into her own hands. “I figured, you know, I’ll direct and edit it to save a lot of frustration and misunderstanding.” But if there’s any real doubt as to how Syd feels, all one needs to do is listen to Hive Mind to get a sense of where she’s coming from.