Instead of holding back, however, she decided to open even further, filming a Lemonade-style mini-movie that fans got a taste of in last month’s video for first single “Cool Girl.” Directed by creative partner Tim Erem, the project features songs from the first chapter of Lady Wood, titled “Fairy Dust,” and co-stars actress Lina Esco (Free the Nipple) as her self-destructive alter ego. “I realized I spend my life chasing rushes, whether it’s love or being on stage or drugs,” she says. “[The album is] like every different stage of that rush.” “Fairy Dust” focuses on the early stages of attraction and the initial hit of adrenaline, while “Fire Fade,” the second half of the LP, explores what happens when that spark starts to go out.
Lo hopes the project, which she shot in five days in Los Angeles this summer, will serve as a reel and pave the way for an acting career. For an artist who called her debut album Queen of the Clouds, though, Lo isn’t actually interested in playing one. “I think I’d probably not do very well as a sci-fi queen in some fantasy movie,” she says. Instead, she cites characters from Monster and Girl, Interrupted as the kind of roles she’d like for herself: “Anything that lets the dark side of my brain run free.”