Ahead of releasing her debut EP Third Second Chance, out this Friday, Lucy McWilliams is calm and self-assured, her face unfurling into a default expression of searching wonderment. She’s ready for whatever comes next, and Friday can not come soon enough.

McWilliams started making Third Second Chance last April. Hoping to find a collaborator that would help define and procure her sound, McWilliams hopped on a flight to Los Angeles, California. There, she met Zach Dawes.

Known for his work with Lana Del Rey, The Last Shadow Puppets and The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, Dawes has quickly become one of the industry’s most sought-after producers.

“I think I always found it kind of hard to find that right collaborator, but, from the get go, [Dawes] was just perfect,” Lucy recalls. “We just sat in the room together, and ‘Old Ways’ — the song that just came out — was written in a few hours, which has never really happened to me. Then from there, I was like, ‘Okay, you're making this project with me.’”

Over a two month period, they workshopped and completed four of the five tracks on Third Second Chance. For the EP’s closer ‘I’m OK,’ Lucy enlisted longtime friend and trusted collaborator Matthew Harris, aka Chameleon. She calls it her “most favourite song" on the record.

“When I was writing it, [‘I’m OK’] came so quickly and it was so fun doing it,” she continues. “The best songs are never the ones you spend hours perfecting. It’s the ones you do without thinking. You find that it captures exactly what you want to say, without overcomplicating or trying to make it sound a certain way.

The new EP boasts a more resplendent and cinematic soundscape than her previous material. Despite the less-is-more approach to songwriting, the final product is a be-saved or be-damned baptism by total immersion in uncharted waters.

This is what it sounds like when an artist opens a new chapter, still vulnerable and romantic but with a sense of self-assuredness and poise bleeding through. Third Second Chance sees Lucy McWilliams exiting the echo chamber of bedroom-pop to enter the vibrant solarium of indie rock.

While this new sound can be credited to tighter chops and more gleaming production choices, the shift is also, in part, a response to her surroundings.

“I think that whatever world I'm in, then the music will relate to that world,” she remarks. “A lot of things were changing in my life this time last year, and the sound reflects that. So I suppose whatever comes next will hopefully evolve along that line.”

Having established roots in the music scenes around Dublin, Berlin, London and LA, Lucy certainly views the influence a certain location can have when it comes to a particular sound.

She creates her own opportunities, her own second chances. If it appears she’s running away, it’s because she’s actually chasing something bigger than herself, bigger than the confines of remaining in one place.

“I think I always feel at home somewhere for moments and then once that realisation kicks in, I don’t feel at home anymore. I feel I’m not running away, but running towards something. I just don’t know what that is just yet.”

Everywhere she goes, Lucy takes another place with her. You can place yourself in the darkened Berlin streets when listening to her earlier music – which takes on more sombre airs – or her recent soundscapes of experimental saturation informed by London’s buzzing indie-rock scene. This nomadic way of life has granted her a great deal of perspective and accountability.

“I think it's the same with anything, whether it's a place, person or even yourself, that it’s easy to blame something outside the self, which I've done before.”

“Then you realise, ‘Hold on, maybe it isn’t that.’ You allow yourself to be stuck in that world. What you find is that every time you're in a new place with new people, it's still the same issue.”

Through rose-tinted lenses, however, all the red flags look like flags. On the EP’s opening track ‘Mr. Useless,’ McWilliams speaks to the clarity she accrues from forming a different outlook on a situation.

“Once the [rose-tinted glasses] are off, it’s funny to see how things snap into place,” she comments. “I guess [‘Mr. Useless’] is about seeing flaws in a situation that you hadn’t before.”

Third Second Chance is all about self-actualisation and the pursuit of fulfillment. The five tracks are anthemic, a cinematic soundtrack to the vignettes of early-20s womanhood: homesickness for childhood, facing hard-truths in relationships, realising personal needs. Growing pains find a home in this new EP with barrelling melodies and hot-to-touch rhythm sections.

Her sound is bigger and better than ever. The grandiosity is ever apparent on ‘Plastic’, the propulsive lead single with a sweltering bass line that feels like catching someone’s eye at a traffic light, then driving on. On the track, Lucy interrogates her past docility in relationships, airing frustrations over her compliance in eclipsing her own identity at the prospect of being loved.

Parallel to the personal growth discussed in the lyrics is an expansion of the singer’s sonic ambition.

“I think there definitely is like this breakaway from the sound,” she reflects.

It’s an ever-widening circle of optimisation that sees Lucy McWilliams throwing genre back in the atom smasher, experimenting with sound, exploring new themes in adjacence to her circumstances.

Third Second Chance encompasses a journey towards breaking free, either from a previous sound, production chops, a place of residence or even a relationship. Is the artist still breaking free?

“Yes,” Lucy responds. “I think sometimes things just happen in everyone's life, where you're just kind of snapped into a bit of reality and you realise what isn’t working. And I'm still trying to figure that out. I think I'll be saying that for a long time.”

Third Second Chance is out this Friday, 22 March. Lucy McWilliams plays The Grand Social in Dublin on March 28.