“Light a candle for me, tell your mother I’ll miss her,” is certainly one way to open a song and mark the end of a relationship. Young and ready to stun, Forest and her smudged kohl eyeliner reside in the deepest crevices of modern alternative music. The down-to-earth budding rockstar spoke to me through Instagram direct messages about her latest single “Death of Us,” how she builds her songs, Elliott Smith, and her hopes to release an album soon.

FOTB: How did your latest single “Death of Us” come about?

Forest: The whole song was conceived after a phone call with my ex-boyfriend. I won’t get too nitty gritty about it but in essence, I got pretty upset about something that I told him was gonna happen while I’m out of a relationship. In all honesty, my anger about it got a bit out of hand, basically just an unproportionate amount of anger.

Did the lyrics come to you one day? Did you hear the instrumental and get inspired?

My writing process is a bit weird, I sit down with my guitar and play until I find some chords I then just build an entire song in pieces. The one thing I knew I wanted to write about ahead of time, or imagery to use, was the letter portion. A lot of the song is more imaginative than real life, but things like alluding to letters drew inspiration from letters he did write to me.

When writing, the song transitioned from a “how could you do this to me” song into a “even if I was this girl I would still not like myself like I do now”. The overall concept of “if you don’t love me, I’ll die” is a bit dramatic, but sometimes that’s how you feel when you’re mourning a relationship with someone.

How would you define your sound? In the current industry, most things get lumped under the big umbrella of “alternative” but is there a more specific genre, band, or artist that you feel is in line with or inspires your sound?

Gosh. Honestly, I feel like if you ask any artist their sound it’s always a complicated answer. At this point I’d just put myself under the alt-rock umbrella. “Death of Us” is totally more pop-punk-ish than the sound I’m going for nowadays.

What I love doing and am heading in the direction of is kind of a shoegaze, post-punk, metal type of thing. I listen to a lot of Elliott Smith and would say that he totally inspires my writing, not that I’m on that level or anything, but thematically and the way I write is heavily inspired by him.

Sound-wise I have a lot of different inspirations. Just to name some of them: The Smashing Pumpkins, Dolly, Deftones, Snake River Conspiracy, Mannequin Pussy. I’m sure there’s more but those I can think of off the top of my head

What are you working on or towards now? Are you thinking of releasing another single or will we be getting a Forest EP soon?

Well first I have a single coming out on October 20th that I’m super excited about! I’m planning on teasing that towards the beginning of October. Besides that I’m working my way up to an album, there’s a lot of moving parts and songs that I’ve fallen out of love with so I’m slowly figuring that all out.

I’m just super happy that people are listening and interested in what I’m doing, kind of surreal to me.