OLIVIA KAPLAN

FROM Los Angeles SOUNDS LIKE Sad songs and cozy production, like a weighted blanket full of feelings

Before the pandeMic, Olivia Kaplan was balancing a few hustles — working part-time at a hip Los Angeles restaurant, teaching music lessons, helping out at the local farmers market — on top of music. After long shifts waiting tables, she’d head straight to the studio to work on her debut album. She didn’t mind and, in fact, found that the arrangement boosted her creativity (the fancy wine she got through her job didn’t hurt either). But it all changed last spring, when she lost those income sources and moved back in with her parents. “The irony is once I started getting unemployment, I could afford to mix and master my record,” says Kaplan, 28. “Which says a lot about how expensive it is to be a musician.”

Her unexpected change in course is good news for fans of homespun pop that cuts deep. Kaplan’s album, Tonight Turns to Nothing (out this spring), is full of deftly crafted songs about challenging subjects — relationship letdowns, a friend’s addiction — with instrumentation from top indie players like Alex Fischel (Spoon) and Buck Meek (Big Thief ). “I have a problem with confrontation,” Kaplan says. “In the period that I was writing a lot of these songs, I was trying to step out of a place of ennui. I’m trying to hone my arguments and the things that I’m trying to say.”

She plans to tour as soon as she’s able to, but for now she’s spending her days at home, working on new music and tutoring a second-grader. “This is the thing about living in your house with your family,” she says. “You sit and have an interview with Rolling Stone five feet away from where you first picked up the guitar.”