With her devastating songs about romantic longing, the singer-songwriter has rewritten the indie rulebook, garnering a legion of dedicated fans along the way.

Now, she’s speaking out against the exploitation that defines the music industry, imagining a future in which the artist is no longer a product.

MITSKI MIYAWAKI IS REMINISCING about a missing person. “She was someone who simply wrote her feelings, and didn’t think about how her narrative was being conveyed,” she recalls, describing a talented 20-something who’s “long gone now”.

This missing woman looked like Mitski, sounded like Mitski, and even released an album under the Japanese-American artist’s name: 2012’s , a plaintive, piano-led wander through a sadness best described as biological. On songs like ‘Liquid Smooth’ and the hypnotic ‘Wife’, she sang about the kind of loneliness that pervades every molecule. It introduced the world to an artist who’d become one of the biggest indie acts on the planet, lauded by Iggy Pop as “the most advanced American songwriter that I know”. But Mitski keyboards and danceable rhythms concealed a quiet darkness. “When there’s a sad message under a veneer of danciness and happiness, you almost trick people into going on that journey with you. Like: ‘Oops, too late! You’re sucked in!’”