Evenson’s visual logic is almost delightfully contrarian. “Most of the time, I want the video to be completely opposite of what the song is about,” she says, as if she’s just described the weather instead of an aesthetic philosophy. Case in point: “Lucky Day” — a song born from the blunt experience of being called a bitch online — whose video unfolds like a theatrical slapstick set inside a traveling troupe’s production of Julius Caesar. “‘Lucky Day’ is literally just about a man who called me a bitch online,” she shrugs with a dry laugh. “And the visual is me just bossing everyone around in a theatre troupe while they get mad at me.” It’s somewhat of an emotional backflip, a decision that makes exact sense when she explains the influences behind it: “I think maybe it’s because I grew up watching filmmakers like David Lynch who do very abstract things. It’s just what I know and what hits hardest for me.” 

For all of the theatrics, Evenson is careful about what she actually gives away. “I don’t know if I ever want to tell the world the actual meanings of these songs,” she says, not coy so much as firm. She grew up an only child, she tells me, which meant she didn’t have to share much of anything unless she wanted to. Her mom, though, was different. “My mom is very open emotionally, and I would have really long, deep talks with her as a kid.” The result is someone deeply fluent in feelings, but selective about their distribution. “I think I became very comfortable talking about my feelings at a young age and, in turn, gravitated towards more vulnerable music growing up.”

You can hear that tension most clearly on “Crash My Car For You,” which she tells me is her favourite — at least right now. It opens on a voice note that feels almost nosy to listen to. “No, I had a crazy idea and I’m scared to say it,” she says, before a male voice cuts in: “You should say it, say that shit.” It’s awkward in a way that feels intentional, like she’s leaving the door cracked instead of swinging it wide open. The song lingers there for a while — mostly guitar, her voice steady but exposed — before she drops the line, “It’s all your fault I wanna crash my car for you, baby it’s nothing to me.” It’s dramatic, maybe even funny in its extremity. Then the whole thing tips forward: drums slam in, her voice splinters into blown-out, reverb-soaked oohs, and the restraint gives way to something bigger, peeling out of the driveway at full speed — just like the album itself.

Evenson insists the film was never meant to simply illustrate the record. “It’s about self-image, sexuality, learning to be okay in uncomfortable situations,” she admits, almost like she’s confessing how making it helped her figure some of that out herself. Then, just to puncture the weightiness, she leans back and grins. She’s discovered the film is on Letterboxd. “Now that’s an ‘I made it’ moment,” she says — like crossing a finish line she built herself, only this time the race is online, the podium imaginary, and somehow the theatre troupe is cheering too.