To unleash her full potential in the next phase of her winding musical journey, Lauren Hoffman had to stop being, well, Lauren Hoffman. She had to become The Secret Storm.

Since she released her first album, Megiddo, in 1997 on Virgin Records, Hoffman has worked to eschew the trite, folksy connotations of the term “singer/songwriter,” and has created deeply powerful music, channeling influences across many decades to capture the emotions and experiences of her life. Since her 2009 album, Interplanetary Traveler, she needed to head back to the drawing board and put some distance between her personal and artistic identities. “I’ve never felt good about recording under my own name,” she explains. “The ‘Lauren Hoffman’ that shows up on the credit card receipt at the grocery store and the ‘Lauren Hoffman’ who shows up on Spotify just felt like two very different things… working under the name The Secret Storm creates this a psychological distinction between me as a person and the work itself. It’s liberating.”

The Secret Storm’s debut EP, In The Sun, will be released May 19th. The titular track, “In The Sun,” is a sexy jam with vocals reminiscent of the queens of nineties alt-rock. Though tinged with pop, the song is complex and infectious with its slight grunge lilt that mirrors the inherent tensions in the lyrics. Hoffman whispers in her low croon, “I hate myself for shivering/for wanting more and more of how you make me feel.” The sleek, powerful video courses with this same conflicting battle of head and heart; oh, the things we do when love is involved.

The Secret Storm is a vehicle that allows Hoffman to explore these emotional intricacies. “One of the reasons that I like the name The Secret Storm is that it represents this private emotional life we carry around inside of us.” She explains, “As a fairly rational, reasonable person, the way I talk about my life out loud to a casual friend is not necessarily the same way that my feelings might speak. Songwriting is this amazing place where you can let your feelings talk, you can express things that you have to keep hidden in your day to day life.”

Watch the video for “In the Sun” below.