Marie Ulven AKA: girl in red has released a new video for her single “Serotonin.” The clip features her running around the streets of Oslo; girl in red co-directed the video with close friend and collaborator Isak Jenssen. She even manages to meme herself. The video arrives less than a week prior to the singer/songwriter/producer’s debut album if i could make it go quiet, which drops on April 30, via World In Red/AWAL

For if i could make it go quiet, Ulven wrote and demoed 11 songs at home, and soon she was borrowing her father’s car to make the eight-hour trek from the Norwegian capital city to Bergen, to record the LP. “Every time I left the studio from Bergen, I would listen to hours and hours of my own tracks, and just be like, what can I do better? What can I refine?” she says, recalling her cross-country drives through the Norwegian wilderness to the studio. “Driving is a cathartic thing; it gives this amazing feeling of freedom. I love to talk to myself, so most of the time, if I didn’t listen to my songs, I would just reflect in the car. I read that talking out loud to yourself is healthy, so I’m going to keep doing that. But the drives, they take you out of all the other distractions because you just gotta pay attention to the road. It allows you some headspace.”

“There are things on this album that I haven’t been able to talk about in my songwriting previously,” she says of if i could make it go quiet. “‘Serotonin’ is brutally honest, lyrically, especially about having these intrusive thoughts — thoughts of never going to be okay, and thinking my therapist hates me. I stopped going to my therapist because I felt like I was such a big burden for her that she didn’t like me. I’m pretty sure a lot of people have felt that, whether it’s a friend or a family member or a therapist. I’m addressing a lot of things I haven’t been comfortable talking about, or admitting to myself, or even things to tell my closest friends and family.”

Betrayal, lust, longing, pulling herself out of a depressive spell — nothing is off-limits on if i could make i go quiet, and Ulven lays bare her ruminations on all of the above while distorting and reimagining the sounds coming out of her piano and guitar. She explores the limits of the human condition and her radical acceptance of it on “Body And Mind,” which ebbs and flows over a moody, electronic groove; she proudly tackles sexual liberation with sunny chords on “hornylovesickmess,” and reveals she wants more from an unavailable partner on “midnight love.”

Love, in all its messiness, is a constant muse on if i could make it go quiet, and Ulven delighted in challenging the mere concept of a love song, and what it can do, in her own way. “When you [hear] ‘love song,’ I have very bad connotations immediately; I’m like, that’s some sappy shit!” she says, laughing. “But love is so big, and there are so many sides to love. I feel like I’m exploring a little bit more of the hate side of love with this album. I also feel like I’m exploring a little bit more of being vulnerable and letting someone in. I haven’t talked about that before… [The album] is a big, boiling pot of thoughts and things I haven’t said.”

There are lessons to be drawn from these self-examinations, and Ulven has eagerly embraced the opportunity to write her way through them, even when it hurts or she’s left with more questions than answers. It’s easy to picture her behind the wheel, somewhere between Oslo and Bergen, listening through “Rue” while recalling the dark mental place she was in when she wrote the song, or the friendship she hoped would turn into something more that inspired “You Stupid Bitch.”

Pre-order if i could make it go quiet HERE