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Interview

Grimes

Montreal's Claire Boucher makes featherlight GarageBand pop as Grimes.

by Carrie Battan

OCTOBER 17 2011


Claire Boucher, the 23-year-old singer and producer from Montreal who goes by Grimes, talks about making music the same way many people describe the effects of attention deficit disorder. Her easily distracted sound culls inspiration from scattered genres and themes that she grows obsessed with and then quickly sets aside-- Korean pop music, contemporary mainstream divas like Mariah Carey, and the work of Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, to name a recent few.

The constant in Boucher's music is her distinctive and girlish falsetto, which often soars above whatever references she's compiled. (On the phone, her comparatively low-pitched speaking voice is a little surprising.) All of it then gets filtered through GarageBand; each of her releases, including her forthcoming third full-length Visions-- out January 31-- has been recorded and produced using the consumer-friendly program.

After two LPs, Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, and Darkbloom, a split EP with D'Eon, Boucher says she's now comfortable enough with her voice to make it a more significant focal point on the upcoming album. And whereas her prior releases served as cobbled-together rough drafts, Boucher says Visions marks a genuine debut.


Pitchfork:Visions is your third album, but you've said it feels like your first. Why?

Grimes: Those other two albums were literally the first music I ever made. They were just practice. I don't hate them, but instead of actually making what I wanted to make, I was making what I was able to make. I wish I could have just put this out as my first album.

Pitchfork: Are you still going to school at McGill University in Montreal?

G: I was actually expelled for missing almost a year of class. It's their policy, but I wasn't aware of it because I was skipping at the time. [laughs] So I no longer attend McGill, which kind of sucks because I wish I had a degree after spending that much money and time working on something. But actually, no, it doesn't suck. I was done. Now, I'm working on music all the time. It's not like I really need a job, because everything is super cheap in Montreal.

Pitchfork: You played to some relatively big crowds opening for Lykke Li recently. What was that like?

G: It forced me to become a musician. Previously, I was playing shows for 30 people, and then it turned into 3,000 people. So I practiced a lot and made everything more coherent. Before that, it was kind of jammy-- I would improvise a lot. But that tour is one of the reasons why I started bringing my vocals up, because I would always [get a better reaction] if the vocals were higher in the mix.

Pitchfork: You co-directed your video for "Vanessa" from the Darkbloom EP. What was the inspiration for it?

G: That was a real K-pop-influenced video. The budget was $60, which all went to alcohol. We literally planned it the night before. I just got a bunch of my friends to drink a lot and was like, "We're going to do dance moves." We did it in a couple of hours. I almost didn't care what it looked like; I just wanted it to look like everyone's having a good time. I also wanted it to be kind of creepy, too, hence the backward stuff.

I want to make a video for every track on Visions, and right now I'm starting one on 35mm for "Oblivion". It's going to be sick. All my brother's friends play varsity sports and are buff, so we're going to have them spritzed in oil, working out with strobe lights in it.

Pitchfork: Are your siblings into your music?

G: I have two younger biological brothers and two stepbrothers, and they're all into it, kind of. My oldest stepbrother is a rapper. He's called Jay Worthy. He's pretty tough, pretty crazy. Like, you get in his car, and there's blood splattered in it, and you're like, "Oh." We want to collaborate.

Interview

Grimes

Top Things

01. Mozart's Sister: "Don't Leave It To Me": This is the jam.

02. Miharu Koshi: Boy Soprano: Klaus Nomi meets "Zelda: Ocarina of Time" soundtrack sung by a pretty girl who sounds like a little boy.

03. Halloween @ Daytona Beach: We were the only people in a luxury hotel on the beach that was basically free because no one goes to Daytona Beach in October. It was creepy/ghost-townish, but also bright pink and filled with palm trees and decrepit liquor stores. I got to swim naked in the ocean and practice figure skating lifts with members of Austra.

04. Mexico City Acid Parties at the Pyramids: I went to Mexico for a show with d'Eon and ended up hanging out with the promoters all week. They planned a series of outings for us that included dropping LSD at Teotihuacan. ♡ UFOria 2011 ♡.

05. The Tonstartssbandht "Brothers Show" at La Brique in Montreal: Possibly the best show I've ever attended. I remember mostly a lot blood and feedback, everything existing in a strobe, and pulling a muscle in my back. The best part about it was that there were maybe 30 people there.

06.__ Grimes + Doldrums World Tour 2011: __This changed my life more than anything else I did this year.

07. Dragon Ball Bubble Tea: Best bubble tea ever! Located on Oak and King Ed in Vancouver. Recommended: Taro or Green Tea flavours.

08. La La La Human Steps: Edouard Lock is like the Greg Araki of the dance world. It's super intense, dirty, goth-y, gender-bending ballet; men on pointe, tons of eyeliner, black vinyl, nudity, stuff like that. Extremely strong female leads. Louise Lecavalier might be my favourite dancer. They've had ballets scored by Skinny Puppy and other Industrial acts. The stuff from the 1980s and1990s is coolest, but Amelia is probably the strongest.

09. Extra-Terrestrial Sex Fetish: This is one of two books with me on tour right now (the other is The Alchemist, haha). I suppose it's basically porn, but it's pretty interesting and very witty. This book also ruined my credit rating as it's the only thing I ever bought online. I forgot to pay the bill for two years so I feel compelled to read it. The catch phrase is "If aliens are more intelligent than man, then might they-- must they-- not be more sexually advanced than man too?" Heh.

10. Using the Internet to subvert the government: Bitcoin, the use of social media to mobilize change (Arab Spring, Occupy), etc. Some things I support, some things I don't-- but the internet does more for democracy (which I also don't know if I support) than the fucking government.

Interview

Grimes

Montreal electro-pop prodigy Claire Boucher on her quest for pure aesthetics.

by Carrie Battan

FEBRUARY 16 2012


Even by the loosest of downtown New York standards, Claire Boucher looks pretty out-there standing atop the Standard East Village hotel late on a Friday afternoon in January. The 23-year-old electro-pop singer/producer who goes by Grimes flew down from Montreal for just a few hours to pose for a spread in V magazine, and a section of her hair has been molded into a neon-green spike that runs down the side of her face. The rest of her ensemble consists of an oversized leopard-print dress, black tights, and too-small sandals; think day-glo punk elf. The shoot features two other musicians, Iggy Azalea-- the Australian rapper of YouTube-viral "P.U.$.$.Y." notoriety-- and Cody Critcheloe of New York neo-disco act Ssion, and everyone looks appropriately bored milling around the hotel penthouse. Everyone but Boucher, who is fidgeting inside her puffy winter coat and flashing me a loaded grin that says: "I'm getting a big kick out of this," and "sorry it's taking so long," and "I'm fucking freezing."

Boucher, who has been approached to appear in Vogue, too, has grown accustomed to high-end photo shoots in recent months. "I don't care about looking good in the magazine," she tells me later. "In fact, I look like an Oompa-Loompa. But I like the idea of a culture of pure aesthetics. It feels like a video game." Listening to her new album, Visions-- out next week via 4AD-- this approach becomes even more apparent. The record is an expert execution of hyper-digital sound that takes glitchy and glossy to the extreme: Using a couple of vocal pedals, a sampler, a Juno-G keyboard, and GarageBand, Boucher pumps 1980s bubblegum-pop vibes through a series of futuristic filters, topping everything with extraterrestrial vocals. Video games would be lucky to have her.

❝ "I approach music-- and this sounds crazy-- as though I'm Phil Spector, and I'm cranking out these pop stars and forcing them to do all this crazy stuff-- except they're all me." ❞

Pitchfork: I feel like there's something patently feminine about the way Visions sounds.

Claire Boucher: I hope not. I don't want to think it's patently girly. Vocally it is, because that's where my capabilities lie, and my influences as far as pop goes are female stars. But production-wise and instrumentally, my biggest influences are primarily men: Aphex Twin, the Dungeon Family, OutKast, that kind of shit.

I also feel like those [gender] lines are changing. A couple of years ago, it wasn't nearly as OK for guys to like girly-sounding music. But all of a sudden a lot of my guys friends who would like have been really disdainful of female singers are way more accepting. My brothers' friends are all basketball jock-bros, and they really like Lykke Li and Robyn.

I grew up with four brothers, and in the back of my head I feel pretty masculine. It's always funny when I hear recordings of my voice, because it's so deep when I hear it in my head. And in any given situation with a group of women, I'll always take on a really masculine role. I approach music-- and this sounds crazy-- as though I'm Phil Spector, and I'm cranking out these pop stars and forcing them to do all this crazy stuff-- except they're all me. But I'm not, like, transgendered. [laughs]

Pitchfork: Seems pretty complicated.

CB: I have a really weird relationship with myself where I'll say, "Do it, do it!" and then, "I don't want to do it anymore, I hate photo shoots, I'm so tired of this!" Or, "I wrote a song, and you're gonna sing it!" then, "I can't hit the note." I want to be a behind-the-scenes producer. I really hate being in front of people. But I'm also obsessed with becoming a pop star.

❝ "When Regis grabbed Nicki Minaj's ass on TV, she just giggled. I was like, 'What the fuck! Come on! Punch him in the face!'" ❞

Pitchfork: It seems that female artists within the indiesphere are subject to a lot of the same things that mainstream pop artists are. Lykke Li has a modeling contract, for example.

CB: I mean, they're all fucking beautiful. Ugly girls generally don't become successful in music. And it sucks because it's a standard that just exists.

Pitchfork: Do you want to push back against that at all? Obviously people like the way you look. But how do you feel about the idea of being sexualized?

CB: If that happened, it wouldn't be because I was wearing sexy clothes, because I look like a baby. But music is an inherently sexual thing. If something sexual is going to be expressed, it's going to be in my music. You should be able to be in your underwear if you want, but it's going to change the way people perceive you. I think a lot of music that's really innovative is not even considered because it was made by people who had a sexual image. And people assume that it's a commodified thing, so it can't be "indie."

Though I can't say that I respect the gender politics of some of the female artists I like the most. When Regis [Philbin] grabbed Nicki Minaj's ass on TV, she just giggled. I was like, "What the fuck! Come on! Punch him in the face!" Up until that point I'd thought, "Wow, Nicki Minaj is a bad bitch. Sick."

Pitchfork: Your voice covers so many different styles, tones, and forms throughout Visions. How do you see its role within your music?

CB: I definitely see the voice as an instrument: It makes great drums, great synth pads, great everything. Vocals can be so many things, like, "Hey, I'm Michael Jackson, and this is my iconic voice," or a choir of people sounding like Mozart's Requiem. Mariah Carey is my favorite singer because her voice sounds utterly groundless. It's not even a human voice; it almost sounds mechanical.

Pitchfork: How did you first get into Mariah?

CB: In 2007 or 2008, I started listening to R&B on this road trip with my dad because we couldn't agree on anything else. I smoked weed and listened to "Fantasy" and felt something I'd never felt before [laughs]-- yeah, that makes me sound so ignorant. But then I slowly started gravitating more toward female singers, because I was able to relate. In medieval Christian thought, it was assumed that the better you were as a singer, the purer your heart was. I don't necessarily think that's true, but Mariah Carey has the voice of someone who has never done evil.

❝ "Just because something might not have a deep philosophical meaning doesn't mean it's not important or relevant." ❞

Pitchfork: It can be tough to make out the lyrics in your songs. How do you write them?

CB: I usually produce loops and then try to create lyrics that have meaning to me, but I also work in terms of enunciation. "Ah" and "ooh" are very different, and I need it to be the right way. I want to say my life inspires my lyrics, but I also try to abstract them as much as possible because I don't want to refer to my life explicitly. I'm definitely really embarrassed by my lyrics.

I give myself shit: "What are you doing? What is all this random babble? Is music anything besides something that feels good?" If that's all it is, that's great, but now I'm a musician and I want it to be more than just random babble. A lot of this record is about the fact that I've given up everything else-- all the relationships in my life, my home-- to do this.

The song "Vowels = space and time" was actually me angrily writing about the fact that people were always getting on me for not writing songs about things. It's based on a theory from Russian Zaum philosophy, which is this weird, obscure pre-Dada early-1900s surrealist group that believed language was false because vocal expression had inherent emotional meanings or qualities. I was like, "This justifies my other records!" [laughs]

Pitchfork: I like when I can make out specifics in your lyrics. There's one bit on "Skin" that stands out: "I know you're faced with something that could consume you completely/ Soft skin/ You touch me once again and somehow it stings/ Because I know it is the end."

CB: That's about being in love with someone who's ultimately too caught up in their own shit. I wrote "Skin" for one person and one person only. It's one thing to make a song that you feel really good about, but sometimes you don't actually want anyone to hear it. I can't listen to my own music when someone else is in the room.

Pitchfork: The internet makes it pretty easy to discover cool things and curate them as influences. Are you worried about coming across as merely topical?

CB: My great fear is that I'm the ultimate shallow person. I think about this kind of thing a lot, and about this phenomenon in our culture where people identify themselves with their interests. I've been trying not to think about it too much. It used to really upset me when people called me "witch house." And then one day I thought, "But I did make a witch house record, whether I like it or not. Boo-hoo."

Instead of thinking about whether or not I'm credited with really liking K-pop first or following a trend or whatever-- fuck it. Let it go. It's not important. I feel like all of these people are always competing to be the first person who knows the most about the most obscure things, but it's all great stuff that everyone should take part in. I love going through people's Tumblrs. It's people just reveling in all the beauty that the internet is bringing forth for everyone to see. Just because something might not have a deep philosophical meaning doesn't mean it's not important or relevant.

Interview

Grimes: “Oblivion”

Claire Boucher and Emily Kai Bock talk about their dreamy, subversive video.


by Ryan Dombal

MARCH 5 2012


When Grimes’ Claire Boucher, director Emily Kai Bock, and cinematographer Evan Prosofsky were making their way to a football game to shoot the “Oblivion” video last October, they didn’t exactly know what to expect, or what kind of footage they would come away with. “We were laughing a lot, like, '‘hat the hell are we doing going to do in a football stadium?’” recalls Boucher. And that sense of playful spontaneity gives plenty of life to the finished clip, which finds the singer performing in big arenas—but instead of projecting from a stage, she’s mugging from the cheap seats as cheerleaders and motorbikes gracefully glide through the air behind her.

The from-the-crowd setup neatly inverts common notions of spectator and spectacle: Boucher is the venue’s star because the camera’s trained on her, and half the fun of the video is derived from impromptu “fan” reactions. The clip also features staged scenes with Boucher holding court over a bunch of ripped, shirtless dudes working out and shoving each other around with teenage abandon. The scenes are wildly masculine but, at the same time, there's no doubt who's controlling the action.

“Claire was the first girl in our scene to play a show alone at the loft venue I co-ran in Montreal,” says Bock, 28, who befriended Boucher about five years ago when they were both living in Vancouver. And, with the “Oblivion” video, the pair wanted to convey a feeling of female empowerment while not being too overt or didactic about it. Thanks to Boucher’s charmingly off-the-cuff performance, along with Bock and Prosofsky’s eye for gorgeous, atmospheric frames, they pulled it off.


Pitchfork: A lot of the power of this video comes from dropping these very dream-like sounds and images into unexpected, male-dominated spaces.

Claire Boucher: The sports world is so different from what we normally engage with, so it was like this voyeuristic look into a really violent community. Art gives me an outlet where I can be aggressive in a world where I usually can’t be, and part of it was asserting this abstract female power in these male-dominated arenas—the video is somewhat about objectifying men. Not in a disrespectful way, though.

Emily Kai Bock: It’s about the gladiator archetype and how boys are predisposed to that as a universal role model, which always seemed silly to me. Girls don’t have the same pressure to measure up that way, but they have different pressures. I really like the metaphor of Claire entering these typically-male territories and being like, “What’s up, I’m here to sing my song.” In a way, it represents how it feels as a girl in the film and music worlds, because we sometimes get a sense of not being taken as seriously.

Pitchfork: What’s your relationship with sports in general? Have you guys ever played on any sort of team?

CB: I was on the worst team in the Christian girls basketball league when I was young, but I’ve always felt alienated from that world. I hadn’t really dealt with sports people, except for really negative relationships with jocks in high school. But this shoot was a totally different experience than what I was expecting: I had a great time at the football game. It dawned on me why people do this stuff—it’s actually pretty fun.

While we were shooting, we realized the beauty of these spaces. The motorbike rally was in a 50,000 person arena, it’s insane. I’m never in a super-loud environment filled with smoke and crazy shit and people risking their lives. Every time those guys would go off a jump, I’d be like, “Oh, shit! What’s gonna happen?” I have new appreciation for sports. I’ve gotten into football since we shot the video.

EKB: [laughs] Have you?

CB: Well, at least TV dramas about football.

Pitchfork: Would you ever want to perform at a sporting event like that?

CB: Absolutely, I would love to sing the national anthem at any game ever.

Pitchfork: There’s a great shot in the video of Claire in the crowd performing to the field—it really jumbles up the idea of spectacle and spectator.

EKB: We wanted to subvert the usual distance between those two things. I like being behind the camera because I can control perception and what people see. So even in this giant arena where everyone’s attention is on the field, I’m making people look at this girl alone in the bleachers; creating an audience through the camera is something I find incredibly empowering as a filmmaker. These people were trying to have a good time and watch what was happening on the field, and we got up in their faces. They were really confused by us.

CB: It’s very embarrassing to just walk into a stadium and start singing—everyone is just like, “What the fuck are you doing?” But that’s one of the things that’s really cool about it. We were just causing trouble while being at the whim of hundreds of people trying to watch this event. It’s super sincere because everyone was just drunk at a sporting event. Some people were super into us, and some were really angry.

Pitchfork: Who were those shirtless guys moshing at the end of the video?

EKB: Claire’s brother is into sports so he has a lot of really young, beefy friends who were very willing to mosh for us.

CB: [laughs] Yeah. We bought 10 pizzas for like $12 or some crazy deal like that. And we had a lot of beer.

Pitchfork: Did anybody get hurt in that scene?

CB: The shot where I get pushed towards the camera was so painful—just this huge guy smashing into me. It looks great, though. And people were slipping because we covered everybody in the cheapest oil we could find, which then got on the floor.

EKB: I tried to mop the floor pretty frequently—that was nerve-racking. But it was fun to have 15 guys just do whatever we’d want; I’d be like, “Drop and do push-ups!” and they would immediately do it. [laughs]

Interview

Grimes: "Genesis"


Claire Boucher on the inspirations and dangers behind her wild new video.

by Carrie Battan


"I can't help taking everything that's attractive to me and putting it into stuff," Grimes' Claire Boucher says. "I'm very bad at keeping things minimal." That's never been so apparent as in her new self-directed video for Visions cut "Genesis", a visual feast of oddities that makes her "Oblivion" video look like an episode of "Leave It to Beaver" in comparison. For anyone who's followed Boucher's ascent-- whether fondly or skeptically-- it's safe to say she's outdone herself here.

In the clip, Boucher yields a burning sword and swings a mace, drives an Escalade in the desert, parties and blows bubbles in the back of a limo (while holding a giant python!) and poses in the woods with a bunch of medicated-looking weirdos. And then there's Brooke Candy-- whom Boucher describes as "a very contemporary muse"-- at the metallic neon-pink center of it all, looking like a character you only encounter at the very highest levels of a Sega Genesis role-playing game. Still, in spite of the wild imagery, aggressive characters, and outlandish props, there's a peaceful cotton-candy glow that almost lulls you into hypnosis.


Pitchfork: There's a lot going on here. What's the concept of the video?

Claire Boucher: It's loosely based on this painting by my favorite painter, Hieronymus Bosch, called "The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things". I wanted to play with Medieval/Catholic imagery. I was raised in a Catholic household and went to a Catholic school, and my childhood brain perceived medieval Catholicism as an action movie: There's this crazy omnipresent guy who can destroy you at any moment.

If painters could be compared to filmmakers, Bosch is the Hype Williams of renaissance painters. With Bosch, there's always a narrative that is very nonlinear-- and that's the essence of a good music video. Hype Williams' music videos don't have narratives either-- they just focus so much on charisma. I find it really hard to throw myself into something artistically where I'm making up a whole character and finding something for that character to do.

Pitchfork: It feels reminiscent of a lot of video games, too.

CB: That just naturally happens in a lot of the art I do because I like to read comics and play video games. I want it to be anime-like. It was very Tarantino influenced, and he's influenced by anime, and obviously anime and video games go hand in hand. The video references so much because I can't help taking everything that's attractive to me and putting it into stuff. I'm very bad at keeping things minimal.

❝ "I prefer making videos to making music." ❞

Pitchfork: Who's the woman with the pink braids, Brooke Candy?

CB: I played a show in L.A. a few months ago, and I saw her at a party. She looked so cool that I was like, "OK, I'm just going to move to L.A. because that person has the best style I've ever seen in my life." So I moved to L.A. for a couple of weeks and I ran into her at a party pretty much on the first day. I was just like, "Dude, you have the most star power of any person I've ever met. I need to make a music video and I need you to drive it as a character."

I don't have any money to hire actors. I just need to get people who are going to do a good job being themselves. Brooke Candy was the first person I found. It was all about her.

Pitchfork: What's her background?

CB: She's like a very contemporary muse: People make outfits for her, do her hair, take pictures with her, have her host things. She's like the Ryan Seacrest of indie culture; she's extremely magnetic. Whenever she's in a room, you just feel everyone being pulled towards her. She's also really comfortable with herself, which is key. Sometimes you find people who are magnetic, but once they get in front of a camera, they freak out and get weird. But she performs all the time. She's super powerful and aggressive, but really warm at the same time. That's a really good line to walk. You might be kind of afraid of her, but you still want to be around her. She's very kind in real life.

❝ "Every once in awhile the python would start tightening-- starting to want to kill you-- and the trainer would have to calm it down." ❞

Pitchfork: Why did you decide to add the minute-long intro?

CB: We got all this beautiful footage because the light was unbelievable at the end of the second day, but it didn't fit into the storyline. Still, I really wanted to use it-- I felt like it was aggressive and weird, like Beyoncé meets Dune or something. I also wanted to put out more music because I'm very limited in what I'm allowed to put out now because I signed to a record label. It was an excuse to do more stuff without getting in trouble, I guess.

Pitchfork: Did you have a lot of people gawking and wondering what the hell you were doing when you filmed in L.A.?

CB: People didn't talk to us much. But with the limo shots, we were kind of on the side of the road, and people kept staring and accidentally almost driving into us. The limo driver was just laughing at us; he probably thought we were doing a high school art project.

Pitchfork: You seem pretty comfortable holding a python.

CB: It's just an animal. If you're nice to it, it will most likely be nice back. Every once in awhile it would start tightening-- starting to want to kill you-- and the trainer would have to come and calm it down. It's an albino python that we rented from this place that rents out birds and reptiles for movies.

Pitchfork: It looks just like the snake from Britney Spears' performance of "I'm a Slave 4 U" video at the 2001 Video Music Awards. Could it be the same one?

CB: It's actually a different python. I wish it was the same python. I was specifically referencing her performance in this video. That was one of Britney's best moments.

Pitchfork: Were there any safety issues on set with the snake, the car, or any of the weapons?

CB: I was having a really good time driving that Escalade, but it was definitely very illegal-- I don't have a license. [laughs] I actually almost drove the car into another car. And I think some people got hurt with the weapons. I maced myself in the hip and burnt my hand really badly on the sword. There were definitely some close calls with the mace-- you could kill someone in a minute with that thing.

Pitchfork: It's easy to tell when you have direct involvement in making a video and when you don't, like "Nightmusic".

CB: Yes. That's the one that I did not direct. The director was great, but that's when I decided that I can never not direct a music video ever again. I didn't want it to be a fashion ad. I don't want to make things that look nice but don't really do anything else. I'm not criticizing that video, but the concept was a lot bigger than how it turned out. To be completely honest, I think I prefer making videos to making music.

Pitchfork: You've said that you wanted to make a video for every song on Visions. Are you still planning to do that?

CB: Everyone's so overexposed with Grimes right now, and I'm so sick of my own music that I don't know if I can edit another video, which involves hundreds of hours of listening to your own song again and again and again. It becomes so grating after a while. I've moved on; I'm psychologically past this album.

I want Grimes to get a lot less cute and a lot more aggressive. Obviously, I like things that are cute and aggressive at the same time, but I didn't want it to just be mini-bangs and lip-syncing in a dress. I need to get away from that stuff.

Interview

Grimes Dissects the Visual World of Miss Anthropocene

From TikTok dancers to anime epic Akira, the pop provocateur maps out the look of her latest album.

by Eric Torres

MARCH 10 2020

On the cover of Grimes’ dystopian concept album Miss Anthropocene, a new god who reigns over the modern world is busy tinkering around on their laptop. Rendered as a muted, black-and-pink interface featuring digital art tools, hyper-realistic dolls, computer code, and “BUY NOW” buttons, the image is meant to evoke the album’s villainous electronic pop music. It also offers a peek into the way Grimes tends to work: Miss Anthropocene’s songs and visuals were crafted using software like Ableton Live, After Effects, and Photoshop—programs in which she’s clocked countless hours perfecting her art. As far as the genesis of the cover’s centerpiece, an in-progress, winged creature, Grimes explains, “I took a selfie in the mirror painting on my boobs, and then just kind of traced over that and made it psychedelic.”

Speaking in a stream of consciousness over the phone from Los Angeles, Grimes reels off the rest of her points of inspiration for Miss Anthropocene’s surreal visions. As she veers from singing the praises of finger-gun-firing TikTok dancers to casually dropping the names of 3D imaging software like Blender and ZBrush, Grimes can be a little bit tough to keep up with. But one thing is clear: She’s not about to run out of ideas anytime soon.

Pitchfork: In the video for “Delete Forever,” you play a queen looking over her crumbling empire. How did that one come together?

Grimes: This was actually one of the hardest, most intensive videos we’ve ever made. My brother Mac and our roommate Neil [Hansen] literally did all the 3-D modeling and built the whole world. It’s based off book four of Akira, which is one of our favorite illustrations. The original idea for the video is it would be a queen in a palace counting her jewels as the world burns around her, kind of like Nero on the violin while the city burns. It’s super loaded imagery. We were also trying to figure out how we can get better at building things in Blender and just making everything on our own, because it’s so expensive to make CGI, and you don’t have full control. So mostly my brother Mac does it. He’s a good artist who I trust, and we have very similar tastes. We can reduce our price point a lot, so we’re trying to be able to do this effectively in-house. It would be sick to create this level in [video game software] Unreal Engine and allow people to enter it eventually.

In the “Violence” video, you’re reading the ancient military text The Art of War in the opening shot. What does that book mean to you?

“Violence” is about the goddess of gaming, so I thought putting The Art of War in that context seemed fun. Even the church we filmed it at is all white, so it was supposed to look like ZBrush as well, like we were in a CG world. It was impossible to execute, so the thesis of the music video kind of fell apart, but it looks like how it was supposed to look.

You worked with dancer Natsuki Miya, who has performed with the likes of Beyoncé and Ariana Grande, on the choreography for the “Violence” video. What was that like?

That was really fun! If I hadn’t gotten knocked up, I would have done it again. [laughs] I randomly hired [Natsuki] five years ago on an audition, but she was always extremely good at improvising. So when we were looking for a choreographer, we thought of her. And she did an awesome job. It was inspired a lot by the TikTok user Cindy. She does this weird, kind of cute gun dancing, where her hand movements are edited with the sounds of guns being cocked. It’s this very arresting style, but it’s extremely TikTok-oriented because it’s all fast motion and sound effects and allusions to video games.

To promote the album, there were also provocative billboards and street art that read “GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD.” What was your thinking behind those?

I was like, “Well, we could just throw my picture up and be like, ‘buy the album,’ and no one’s gonna give a fuck—or we could treat the city like an art gallery and put up an actual piece of art that isn’t super promotional for the record but maybe it makes people think or makes people talk.” So [conceptual artist] Ryder [Ripps] put together the “GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD” thing. When I saw it, I was like, “Oh, fuck no, this is a huge mistake.” Then I was like, “Wow, this is so scary that I think we should probably put it up.” The goal was to have less advertising and more public art.

How does your new avatar War Nymph, which was recently featured on the cover of a magazine, play into the album’s concept?

War Nymph is a digital persona. It really is an alternative psyche. As a society we’re going through this weird psychological process of everybody splitting into two identities, their online identity and their real-life identity. Gaming reflects this too—the person I am in games is this other life I have that doesn’t relate to my physical life and having [felt] traumatized from how my online life was manifesting. Then I ended up getting pregnant too, so I was like, “Oh my god, help me get through the album.” So we scanned my body and made a digital self. This thing can become the id, the online psyche of Grimes.

But eventually, in theory, probably five to 10 years from now, you’ll be able to just get an app, take a picture of your face from every angle with your phone, and get a decent 3-D render of yourself. And maybe eventually there will be programs that are more accessible, where you can edit how you look, and then you can make that a playable character in a game. I feel like this Ready Player One future is where we’re headed, so why not start now?

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.