In the tradition of self-titled albums like The Velvet Underground (that band’s third record) St. Vincent titled her fourth solo record St. Vincent. “I was reading Miles Davis’ autobiography and in it he talks about how the hardest thing for any musician to do is to sound like yourself,” she tells Kurt Andersen. “And I thought, ‘You know what? I sound like myself on this record’ and so I just self-titled it.” The songwriter, singer, and guitarist Annie Clark has used the name since 2006. "Annie Clark sounds, to be frank, very, very boring," she admits. Good name for a country singer, though, Kurt suggests; "or Christian contemporary,” she counters. “That's my next career."

If there’s such a thing as indie rock royalty, St. Vincent is definitely among it. Her last record, Strange Mercy, appeared on pretty much every best-of list for 2011. The Smithsonian gave her an American Ingenuity Award for “having a revolutionary effect on how we perceive the world and how we live.” And David Byrne hand-picked her to collaborate on an album with him. “I've always tried to live at that intersection of accessible pop music and lunatic fringe music,” she tells Kurt Andersen.

Clark is also known for the characters that emerge in her songs. “Different archetypes appear in different records,” she explains. “Strange Mercy was the archetype of a repressed housewife on barbiturates and white wine.” Her new record “is a different archetype, the near-future cult leader. But it’s all incredibly personal, it’s all very much me.”

Born and raised in Dallas, Clark got her start playing guitar with The Polyphonic Spree. "I was a kid and I was suddenly in a rock band, and there was Jagermeister and not showering,” she remembers. “Which sounds disgusting to me now, but at the time I was just like 'Oh my god, I'm on the road, I'm opening for Brian Wilson!'" Around that time, Clark started experimenting with guitar effects and cultivating the sound she is known for today. "Tim [DeLaughter, the group's lead singer] would come over and go, 'Hey, can you make that sparkly?' And I'd run to Guitar Center and buy whatever pedal I thought might make a sparkly sound."