Kelly Lee Owens ​will release her second album,​ Inner Song,​ on​ May 1 via Smalltown Supersound​.

Inner Song stems from what Owens describes as “the hardest three years of my life” during which her creative life and everything she’d worked for up to that point were “deeply impacted.” She adds: “I wasn’t sure if I could make anything anymore, and it took quite a lot of courage to get to a point where I could create again.​” Across 10 tracks, Owens dives deep into her own psyche, working through the struggles she’s faced while embracing the beauty of the natural world.

Inner Song was largely recorded over a month last winter. As with her debut, Owens worked with collaborator James Greenwood, but this time she let herself go and became more open with whatever sounds emerged.

“With the first album, I was so obsessed with getting the right sound straightaway, which hindered the flow of ideas,” she explains. “This time around, I let go of my perfection in the initial moment for the ideas to fully flourish and become what they want to be.”

The album opens with a cover of Radiohead’s “Arpeggi,” recorded a year before work on Inner Song properly kicked off. The track represents the sort of sonic rebirth that Owens feels is so essential to the album’s aura. “To me, it sounds like rising out of something quite bleak and hopeless, and resurfacing—a comeback from where I was,” Owens adds.

The evocative title of the album, borrowed from free-jazz maestro ​Alan Silva​’s 1972 opus, “really reflects what it felt like to make this record. I did a lot of inner work in the past few years, and this is a true reflection of that​.”

Alongside the announcement, Owens has presented the album’s lead single, “Melt!​,” which can be streamed in full below. The track, one of the last to be written for Inner Song, dives into the ever-pressing issue of climate change, right down to its structural composition.

“I always need at least one techno banger in there to balance things out,” Owens says. “I knew I wanted to create something that sounded hard with organic samples—one of those samples was melting glacial ice, another was people skating on ice. I felt those were great representations of what’s happening in the world. Every moment you’re breathing and sleeping, this is taking place.”

Owens announced herself with her self-titled debut album in 2017, also on Smalltown Supersound. Inner Song follows remixes of ​St. Vincent​, last year’s Let It Go / Omen​ 12″, and her recent collaboration with ​Jon Hopkins​.

Tracklisting

01. Arpeggi
02. On
03. Melt!
04. Re-Wild
05. Jeanette
06. L.I.N.E.
07. Corner Of My Sky
08. Night
09. Flow
10. Wake-Up

Inner Song​ LP is out May 1 on Smalltown Supersound. Meanwhile, you can stream “Melt!” in full below, and pre-order the album now. The vinyl is being released as a sesquialbum, or triple-sided album, with the fourth side etched by Kim Hiorthøy.