When synthpop singer Molly Nilsson plays live, she takes a CD of her instrumentals, hits play, then sings along with them in a glorious kind of self-karaoke. There’s no band, no instruments, just a woman singing about love, ennui and Milton Friedman. “If people are provoked by seeing a person on stage singing, that’s good,” she audibly shrugs down the line from her home in Berlin. “I think it’s punk. It’s not about skill, it’s the fact that you are human, on a stage where everything is focused on you and your expression. And that has all the value in the world.”

Her stark, mesmerising stage show is a neat visual representation of Nilsson Industries: she is a completely one-woman outfit, producing and performing all her music solo, booking her own tours, and releasing her own albums (this last task admittedly in tandem with indie Glasgow label Night School Records). Her debut came in 2008, and a decade later – following her masterpiece Imaginations, one of the best records of last year – she’s just released her eighth, the similarly excellent Twenty Twenty. Is 10 years a long time to spend by oneself? “I know that a lot of people are afraid of loneliness, and I don’t understand, because it’s nothing,” she says. “When you genuinely feel lonely, you can look at the situation and say: What if I just turn this around, and this is nice? And what if I’m just there for myself instead?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Molly Nilsson: A Slice of Lemon – video

For Nilsson, solitude is spiritually enriching. “I’m on the train and see people on their phones, and I wonder what they’re doing, and I wish they were writing a poem, and I look over and it’s just colourful candies – they’re playing a game. It’s OK, you’re on your way home from work, killing time. But why kill the time? I don’t mean that everything has to be meaningful – sitting and staring is maybe not meaningful, but it’s very necessary for our brains to recover, and to daydream. I think that’s why I became a songwriter: it enabled me to do what I love the most, which is daydreaming.”

But solitude is also political. “A lot of the taboo of loneliness is that when you’re by yourself, you might not be as productive,” she says. “From early childhood, we’re raised to always do something that results in something. We’re deprived of a lot of dreaming. Because that space is always filled up – think of the speed of news and how we don’t really get to digest things.” Nilsson’s songs often comment on capital, be it trickle-down economics, the American dream, or the sheer indomitable power of finance (“You keep waking up a mess / But money’s already dressed”).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Molly Nilsson: ‘I would like to be able to escape everything.’ Photograph: Maya Fuhr

Her daydreaming, then, seems to be a way to exist outside of the channels that capital sends us down; a mental agility that also allows her to see loneliness as joy, or the banal as magical. “I do a lot of exercises where I try to inject a lot of supernatural events into my life that might not really be there – I charge things up so they become really meaningful to me,” she explains. “Every day can’t go around being special, you’ve got to give it some help. Even the way I prepare breakfast.” She gives the example of lighting incense before I called her. “I thought it would be cool if there was a smell. But the incense was very strong and it was quite uncomfortable, so I had to open the window and air it out. That was a failed attempt. But I like the idea of curating everything around me – it’s not just me sitting down writing a song that makes me an artist. I’d like to think I can also write a breakfast, and the breakfast is like a song.” Incense cleared, she reverts to smoking: the flinty rush of a lighter can be heard numerous times during our conversation. “Am I smoking because it makes me feel I’m doing the thing I shouldn’t be doing, and that makes me feel free? Or am I smoking because I’m addicted to it, and I’m not free?” So which is it? “I think I’m addicted. But I would like to be able to escape everything.”

All this imagination and self-direction all dates back to a childhood in Sweden, where she had to fight for attention. “I felt like no one would listen to me. In high school, we were 28 girls and three boys, and I felt those three boys got more attention than all the other girls. I struggled to find female voices that were relatable, and that were singing about today. I felt like: I’ll do it myself then.” Of course, relatability is now the chief currency in pop music, all earnest emotional articulacy and you-do-you affirmations. “Every song on the radio is about waiting for your Uber driver, but this was not the case 12 years ago.”

Initially expending her creative energy on comics and writing, she started playing around on a flatmate’s keyboard. “There were endless possibilities – it didn’t seem that there was anything I couldn’t write a song about.” She moved to Berlin, working in the cloakroom of the bacchanalian superclub Berghain – an apt role for this solo observer – and made enough money each weekend to focus on music on the weekdays, before she quit altogether after her music started taking her around the world.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Molly Nilsson: Let’s Talk About Privileges – video

For all her musing on the cruelty of capital, her determination and deadpan whimsy mark her out as an optimist: she wanted Twenty Twenty to be “a friend that you could turn to”, and its very title is meant to be hopeful. “There’s something very exciting with a new decade,” she says. “And the numbers are so round and inviting – there’s so much promise. It’s like Earth has a birthday and we’re all sharing it together. Birthdays I don’t like so much, they’re so focused on one life and there’s this strange pressure: oh, I’m getting older. But New Year’s has none of that, because we’re getting older together.” She warms to her theme. “I love New Year’s. I don’t think of New Year’s parties, or trying to find someone to kiss at 12 o’clock; I love the idea that there’s this night where everything is new. You could quit smoking and go to the gym and speak to your family more. And everything will be better. You can be cynical and go: yeah, but one week later you’ve got a hamburger on the sofa, and you’re smoking again. But with this record, I didn’t want to focus on 8 January, I wanted to focus on 31 December.”

Her big-hearted outlook is infectious – after our conversation I skip back to my desk like Fred Astaire. Few other solo musicians are so aware of their own ego, desire and capabilities, and so able to pick these qualities up and ponder them. On the one hand, she knows she’s good: “If I got a job at a bakery, I’m not sure my bread would be as good as my songs. If we all do the thing we feel we are the best at, then that’s a positive thing for everyone.” But equally, she knows she could still look at the world from even more obtuse angles. “I’m always trying to teach my brain new ways of thinking, and so right now I would like to get better at steering the mind car. I’m still learning to drive.” So she’s currently in the back seat, still being driven by her mind? I’m sure can hear a wry smile. She replies: “I feel like I’m a passenger, picking the music. But eventually I’ll have to get into the driving seat.”

• Twenty Twenty is out now on Night School Records/Dark Skies Association.