Calling in from her bedroom where she writes the majority of her music, Lexie Carroll is quite a reserved character. At 17, she is an accomplished song writer, creating her bedroom pop/folk ballads that have a dreamy element to them.

So hello, we’re talking to the one and only Lexie Carroll, songwriter extraordinaire, bedroom pop aficionado whose music that makes you want to go into the woods and just have a lovely walk. Your new EP When the sun came up comes out April 29th. How are you feeling about your debut?

I’m really excited. I think that this EP shows a lot of different sides of the music that I want to make. There’s quite a variety of themes and sounds which is exciting.

I didn’t want to just solely do like really folky stuff. I wanted to put more of the pop stuff in which you get with familiar stranger. And yeah, it was just really fun to make. And I’m excited to put it out.

So just to talk on your process, you combine all sorts of sounds for instance field recordings, like in the beginning of we’re not lonely anymore. And then like you said, you’ve got folky and pop, what is your process when you sit down and write?

I think when I write I don’t really think about all of the productioney type things. I write here in my bedroom and I just say a load of random stuff and don’t really think about it too much.

And then when it gets to production, well I’ve collaborated with some different producers: on this EP I’ve worked with three different people. I just talked to them about it and think about what the song is about and how I can get that across with not just the lyrics, but the sounds and the recording, and it’s a very fun process. I really enjoy it.

Your lyrics there have this very poetic nature to them. What’s your process when writing lyrics? You say you sort of put a bunch of random stuff and yet it doesn’t feel like that. So where do you find the inspiration for them?

Thank you. It really is just like that to be honest I don’t really think too much about what it means at the beginning, I just sort of say things that I think sound nice. I like the thinking about how words fit together and sort of the way you speak and I try and make it sound as natural as possible. I think my songs are quite conversational, because I’m just sort of saying stuff.

So a lot of the time, I don’t really know what I’m writing about until I get to the second verse. And I’m like “What am I actually saying here?” And I think it does come a lot from my subconscious because I’m not really thinking about it that much. And sometimes later down the line, I’ll be like, “Oh, that’s what I was writing about.”

So who have been your biggest inspirations in music?

At the moment, well I think everyone says this, but Phoebe Bridges is a massive one. I love her. She’s just insanely good. Like it’s unfair how good she is. But also it’s very obvious to anyone who listens to my music or even just knows me, I had a very big Dodie phase like, hardcore Dodie fan from the age of 10 it was all I listened to. I think that comes across quite a lot in my music. I think that influenced me a lot because it was when I was first really getting into writing. But also I love Cavetown, Holly Humberstone and Maisie Peters, that’s the people that come to mind first.

And so you’ve been featured on Spotify playlists, such as Lost in the Woods in our generation? How did you feel to be featured there?

Oh, it was so exciting. That’s one of the biggest things I think that’s happened is getting on those playlists because I would just listen to both of those playlists, they’re what I’d put on to find music. So being put on them, I feel really lucky. It’s very strange to have music on a playlist that people that I really liked listening to are on as well. It’s very weird but cool.

Just on the Lost in the Woods, where is your sort of favourite place to get away to?

I live on the edge of London right near the River Thames. You can walk along it, which is really nice. I guess that’s like my “lost in the woods” kind of thing. But I literally go there every day because it’s very nice. It’s just a nice escape from the busyness of London and I really like the calmness of being by the river.

And just to go through your EP, the final song got confirmed, for me yesterday, for the rest of the world when this EP is released, the sky look nice today, what was the inspiration behind that song?

I think that one is definitely the most meaningful song to me. It definitely came from quite a dark place. I struggled a lot with an eating disorder when I was quite young, so it was just about finding strength in myself again. And I think coming out of that you see the world very differently to the way you do when you’re inside of that.

And it’s quite scary, because you begin to feel everything and see a lot more detail. I describe it as like everything, the brightness and the colour, it all turns up in the world.

When you’re in something like that, everything becomes just black and white and you are just very focused on one thing and your world shrinks a lot. So coming out of that is very scary, because it’s hard to deal with. It can be quite overwhelming. But it’s also so beautiful to actually be able to feel things and I think, if you can just take the beauty in that as well as understanding that it’s terrifying, you begin to heal and build up the strength again to be able to deal it.

I think that’s what I wrote it about because it was a big thing in my life, it was something I definitely needed to get out in some way.

On to where does your music take you if you had to build the Lexie Carroll listening experience patent pending, what would it look like?

Okay. So we’d start with a more chilled song to get in the mood and then we’d probably go for a sad, depressing one, because there’s a lot of those in my music and we’d have a good cry, let it all out and then we’d end on an upbeat one, like familiar stranger, and we’d have a nice dance party.

Happy again, everybody with streaking makeup. But that sounds really cathartic actually.

That’s my daily routine.

Wake up, cry, have a boogie. I think that’s actually, it’s quite healthy in a way. Just to sort of finish up what is the next stage for you and your music? You’re releasing this EP and from what I’ve heard of it and it’s really, really good. What is the next stage for Lexie Carroll?

Oh, well the next EP is written and we’re in the process of recording it, which is very exciting. It’s funny because the EP that’s coming out now I wrote probably 18 months ago. So it’s weird releasing it now because I still love it, but you get so excited about the next thing. I am really excited about the next year or so. I think it’ll be really fun.

I think I’m beginning to find my sound more. Like I said at the beginning, the EP was definitely me experimenting around what I wanted to do and obviously I’m still quite young and I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m having fun but the next set of songs feel a bit more cohesive I guess. And I’m really excited to play live more.

I did my first own concert thing a couple of weeks ago and that was so fun. So hopefully to do more of that will be cool.

And one final question on your music videos; quite few you’ve made yourself, haven’t you? Yeah I did the first two.

So are you going to continue with that?

yeah. I think it’s so fun. I love to get involved in all the different parts of the release and so the first two I did on my own and then the next two I did with friends of mine, which was fun because it’s nice to just hang out with people that you like and then they can add their creative magic to it. It helps me to get really involved in it because I know the people. And then the last one, for ‘the sky looked nice today’ we just made recently and that was so exciting. So I would love to do more music videos!

Lexie Carroll’s new EP ‘When the Sun came up‘ is out now.

Pics: press.