The follow-up to St. Vincent’s 2014 self-titled album is due out next spring, according to a new interview Annie Clark gave as part of her Guitar World cover story. (The cover itself — seen above — is “an absurdist comment” on the magazine’s old buyer’s guide covers that depicted bikini-clad models “holding guitars like they’ve never held a guitar before,” Clark said.) She talked a lot about her Ernie Ball signature guitar, and a little bit about her forthcoming fifth solo album, which she says has had a drawn-out recording process that resulted in a “‘real sea change’ in her sound”:

I’ve been able to step back and reflect and not just be in the tour, record, tour, record cycle that I’ve been in for about 10 years. I think it’ll be the deepest, boldest work I’ve ever done. I feel the playing field is really open for creative people to do whatever you want, and that risk will be rewarded—especially now that we have such high stakes from a political and geo-political standpoint. The personal is political and therefore the political can’t help but influence the art. And only music that has something pretty real to say is gonna cut the mustard.

Read the rest of the Guitar World piece here.