St. Vincent wants her music to be "bubbling" and "beastlike".
The musician, real name Annie Clark, released her debut album in 2007 and her self-titled fifth record hit stores last February.
She's becoming more and more recognised in the industry now, in part thanks to her budding romance with model-and-actress Cara Delevingne. Speaking about her sound, the singer explained what she aims for when recording a track.
"I feel kind of irreverent about the function of guitar in a song. I've never been that interested in just chords that strum," she shrugged to Mojo magazine. "I'd rather it be a beast or a monster or a ballerina, and have things feel kinda bubbling and lava lamp-style rather than static. It's nice to just look at things as noisemakers."
Annie is a long way from her old life, admitting that while at school she didn't quite fit in but was "passable enough" not to be bullied by fellow students.
Writing tunes became an outlet for the 32-year-old and once she discovered she could use a computer to put songs together, Annie found herself thinking in terms of colour and layers rather than instruments.
"Music was my currency and my shield, my weapon. I was totally obsessed with music," she recalled. "The amount of minutiae, like baseball card knowledge, stats, facts, and figures that I know about music is just silly. But that's what you do. You get the record of the CD and you see who played on it and who produced it, where it was made and when, and you start to weave your own through-lines, slowly get the picture bigger."
