After the pandemic hit, aspiring indie-pop phenoms seemed to gravitate towards a few common moves: record a couple of covers of Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher to build an audience; bare your soul to the TikTok algorithm through confessional lyrics; whisper into the microphone like you’re afraid someone might catch you recording alone in your room. Often, just two out of three of these requirements did the trick. It worked for Gracie Abrams, Olivia Rodrigo, and even briefly for Katie Gregson-MacLeod, of “complex” fame.

That formula also helped Lizzy McAlpine—a singer-songwriter from Pennsylvania who first garnered attention on social media while a student at Berklee College of Music, uploading videos from home when the pandemic shut down school. Then, her 2022 ballad “Ceilings” sparked a TikTok trend in which people ran away from the camera and passionately belted out its confessional lyrics. The viral success of “Ceilings” epitomized how McAlpine’s early music felt built for a romantic comedy: first swooning, then devastation in the third act. But for her fourth album, Angel, she takes a more homespun approach. McAlpine sounds less like a heroine of a coming-of-age film than a songwriter at an open mic, testing out material for an audience primed to turn songs into snippets.

Before her third studio album, Older, McAlpine parted ways with producers Philip Etherington and Ehren Ebbage, who were responsible for some of her early hits and had a more cinematic pop flair. Instead, she began working with a live band, making secular songs reminiscent of contemporary worship music. It’s not necessarily the subject matter of songs like “Spring Into Summer” or “Pushing It Down and Praying”; it’s their swelling arrangements, and the fact that McAlpine has a velvety voice fit for a youth worship leader. She continues that trend on Angel. When she sings of “holy ground” and “sacred spaces” on the album’s lead single “The Light in the Painting,” an organ-laden track that evokes a dew-soaked dawn, you can picture her staring out into the crowd, one hand reaching for the heavens and the other clutching her chest like a Disney heroine.

Angel is much more traditionally folk and has little of the glossy production that defined her earlier work. The album is built mostly around tender pianos and twangy guitars with the occasional harmonica and bout of whistling. At times, it sounds like she was inspired to create a soundtrack for her Broadway debut, Floyd Collins, a musical about a man who gets trapped in a cave in Kentucky. “A car wash and a new pair of pants” offers a fun, folksy spin on the traditional pop diss track. Its cadre of guitar, bass, percussion, bongos, and pianos tempts McAlpine with the sound of a full, bustling life, waiting on the other side of a breakup.

Since her debut, McAlpine has had a knack for capturing the domestic details of intimacy. On Angel, she describes the tapping of a lover’s fingers (“Angel”), cutting fruit to nourish oneself (“Peach”), and longingly watching someone talk on the phone (“I Have a Friend”). “I Have a Friend” is peak yearning, with some lyrics that are a little too literal: “I have a friend/I have a lover.” But she makes up for it with lines that invite you want to stare out of the window and invent a life with someone—pure daydream fodder: “There is no room/Without your voice to fill it,” she sings, “My mouth is just a straight line/Without your lips to kiss it.”

Across Angel, McAlpine wanders, singing of empty houses, winding paths, forks in the road, and uncharted waters. She wanders sonically, too. The rock-influenced, propulsive sound of “The Moon” and “Ugly Things” recalls McAlpine’s debut, then we get “A Car Wash and a New Pair of Pants,” where she lilts like Joni Mitchell on a ’70s Laurel Canyon production. “Soldier of the Road,” featuring Fleet Foxes, doubles down on the indie folk of Older; it’s also the first time we hear McAlpine blend the personal with the sociopolitical, singing about the alienating effects of war and capitalism. These detours make sense: She wrote Angel while listening to Joni Mitchell’s landmark records Hejira and Blue. Their influence seems to have pushed her in a more exploratory direction on these tracks—with any luck, they’ll encourage her to wander more expansively, and truly head somewhere unique.