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Maggie Lindemann is pop’s prodigy no longer. After cutting her teeth with the streaming megahit “Pretty Girl” six years ago, the singer-songwriter reintroduced herself this past January with a soul-baring debut EP Paranoia, unveiling her most authentic body of work to date. Ditching her signature bubblegum-pop ethos for an electrifying alt-rock aesthetic, Lindemann’s latest project encapsulates the feelings of a trying year spent reckoning with old wounds and rediscovering her sound.

“I was 16 and in an industry that I had no idea about,” says Lindemann. A label deal that seemed to be a golden ticket to stardom quickly morphed into a creatively-crippling ball and chain. “[The] turning point for me was when I realized that I didn’t want to make that kind of music anymore…But also when I found the courage to vocalize that I wanted to make something edgier, something that resembled me more.”

Lindemann tapped into her roots for inspiration, drawing from her early love of hard-rocking guitar heroes like Disturbed, No Doubt, and Black Sabbath. But while full speed ahead onto the highway of heavy metal the budding musician was quickly met with another roadblock. Lindemann was imprisoned while touring overseas, spending five days detained in Malaysia. The harrowing ordeal triggered a wave of anxiety—which only heightened as time elapsed, resulting in her sleeping with a knife under her pillow every night. Desperate to regain a sense of normalcy, Lindemann channeled her terrors into the uptempo headbanger “Knife Under My Pillow” and ultimately her debut EP. “[Paranoia] tells the story of how I was dealing with my paranoia, how [it] has affected different aspects of my life, and how I’ve worked through it,” she says. Newly emboldened, Lindemann now confronts all facets of her angst laced over hasty guitar riffs—from the remnants of fractured love affairs with the track “Crash and Burn”, to the somber soliloquy that is “Loner,” an unofficial anthem for those who take solace in solitude and sadness. Cleaning out your emotional closet has never sounded so good and Maggie Lindemann has done it with ease.