Beginning with the haunting alt-pop hit “ Ocean Eyes ” in 2016, Billie Eilish made it clear she was a newly kind of crop up star—an overtly awkward introvert who favors chilling melodies, moody beats, creepy videos, and a tease crudeness à la Tyler, The Creator. now 17, the Los Angeles native—who was homeschooled along with her brother and co-writer, Finneas O ’ Connell—presents her much-anticipated debut album, a somber probe of all the dark and cryptic spaces that linger in the back of our minds. Sinister dance beat unfold into chattering dialogue from The Office on “ my strange addiction, ” and whispering vocals are laid over measuredly blown-out bass on “ xanny. ” “ There are a lot of firsts, ” says FINNEAS. “ not firsts like ‘ here ’ s the beginning song we made with this kind of beat, ’ but firsts like Billie saying, ‘ I feel in love for the first time. ’ You have a million chances to make an album you ‘re proud of, but to write the birdcall about falling in sexual love for the beginning time ? You entirely get one inject at that. ”

Billie, who is both besiege and fascinated by night terrors and sleep paralysis, has a complicated kinship with her subconscious mind. “ I ’ m the giant under the bed, I ’ megabyte my own worst enemy, ” she told Beats 1 server Zane Lowe during an interview in Paris. “ It ’ s not that the whole album is a badly dream, it ’ south just… surreal. ” With an adorably off-kilter mix of adolescent angst and experimentalism, Billie Eilish is truly the perfect leading for 2019—and here is where her and FINNEAS ‘ heads are at as they prepare for the next phase of her design for pop domination. “ This is my child, ” she says, “ and you get to hold it while it throws up on you. ”

Figuring out her dreams:
Billie: “ Every sung on the album is something that happens when you ’ rhenium asleep—sleep paralysis, night terrors, nightmares, limpid dreams. All things that do n’t have an explanation. absolutely cipher knows. I ‘ve constantly had very bad night terrors and sleep paralysis, and all my dreams are crystalline, so I can control them—I know that I ‘m dreaming when I ‘m dreaming. sometimes the thing from my dream happens the next day and it ‘s so eldritch. The album international relations and security network ’ t me saying, ‘I dreamed that’—it ’ s the palpate. ”

Getting out of her own head:
Billie: “ There ‘s a lot of lying on determination. And it ‘s not like how rappers lie in their music because they think it sounds dumbbell. It ‘s more like making a character out of yourself. I wrote the song ‘8 ‘ from the position of person who I hurt. When people hear that sung, they ‘re like, ‘Oh, poor pamper Billie, she ‘s then hurt. ‘ But in truth I was fair a asshole for a minute and the alone way I could deal with it was to stop and put myself in that person ‘s place. ”

Being a teen nihilist role model:
Billie: “ I love meeting these kids, they fair do n’t give a fuck. And they say they do n’t give a sleep together because of me, which is a impression I ca n’t even describe. But it ‘s not like they do n’t give a sleep together about people or love or taking wish of yourself. It ‘s that you do n’t have to fit into anything, because we all die, finally. No one ‘s going to remember you one day—it could be hundreds of years or it could be one year, it does n’t matter—but anything you do, and anything anyone does to you, wo n’t matter one day. So it ‘s like, why the fuck hear to be something you ‘re not ? ”

Embracing sadness:
Billie: “ Depression has sort of operate everything in my life. My solid animation I ’ ve constantly been a melancholy person. That ’ south my nonpayment. ”

FINNEAS: “ There are moments of heavy rejoice, and Billie and I share a lot of them, but when our motor ’ s off, it ’ s like we ’ re roll downhill. But I ’ m so proud that we haven ’ thymine shied away from songs about self-loathing, insecurity, and frustration. Because we feel that way, for sure. When you ’ ve supplied empathy for people, I think you ’ ve achieved something in music. ”

Staying present:
Billie: “ I have to barely sit back and actually look at what ‘s going on. Our usher in Stockholm was one of the most bill life experiences we ‘ve had. I stood onstage and just looked at the crowd—they were just screaming and they didn ’ metric ton stop—and told them, ‘I used to sit in my live room and shout because I wanted to do this. ‘ I never thought in a thousand years this jack would happen. We ’ ve in truth been choking up at every read. ”

FINNEAS: “ Every picture feels like the final testify. They feel like a farewell tour. And in a eldritch way it kind of is, because, although it ‘s the birth of the album, it ’ s the end of the sequence. ”