The new record marks a reset for Levy—an expansive, 16-track opus crafted after stepping back from the grind of international touring and leaning into other disciplines like painting, poetry, and pedagogy. “For me, that looked like resting, extending my creative reach, going back to school,” she explains. “Taking a step away from music as guided by industry expectations.”

That transdisciplinary approach flows through “baby blue frigidaire mini fridge,” which Levy describes with poetic abstraction: “The Chantal Akerman film where the camera moves in slow circular pans around her apartment… Then what if the frame quickly zooms out as far as it could possibly go?… What we are left with—three things: ‘our old time souls, this old time moon.’ Two things, I mean.”

The album was recorded mostly live-off-the-floor in rural Ontario with her core band—Tasy Hudson, Chris Hauer, and Summer Kodama—and co-produced by Luke Temple (Adrianne Lenker, Hand Habits), yielding lush arrangements and a warm, human looseness.

More than just an album, when i paint my masterpiece is a philosophical gesture. It doesn’t chase perfection, but embraces the act of creation itself. As always with Ada Lea, the lowercase titles speak volumes: intimate, unruly, alive. The masterpiece, it turns out, is in the making.

when i paint my masterpiece is out August 8 via Next Door Records/Saddle Creek