Do you watch Girls? If you do, then you’ve probably heard Lia Ices. Her song “Love Is Won” was played during the closing credits in an episode of the first season. But that song is from her sophomore album Grown Unknown, and if you go listen to her music today, you will probably experience a much different artist. Her new album, Ices, breaks the mold that she had set for herself. The album is a well-crafted psych pop statement that shows off her progress in songwriting and style. We had the pleasure of talking to her before her show at Church.

AP: I noticed for the new album you steered away from your traditional folk influence, and made it more electronic. Why did you decide to go that route?

Lia Ices: I think after touring Grown Unknown, I kind of got to a place where I knew I needed to go inside and kind of learn new systems and challenge myself and switch it up. I think, like the singer-songwriter format started to feel a little bit limiting, especially in the live aspect of it. So after tour I worked with my brother; he’s always been in my band. I think I was getting a lot of energy from these collaborations with my band.

So I decided, you know, just to do something totally new and to do it with Eliot and to just kind of take our time. Challenge myself, like starting with a beat instead of a melody or starting from a sound instead of a word, so it was just important to keep challenging myself.

AP: You mentioned your brother Eliot. He’s your twin, right?

LI: Yeah!

AP: That’s really cool that you work with your twin. Do you think that helps with your songwriting?

LI: Yeah I think we are really in tune with each other and I think we’re a little bit psychic with each other, like we don’t need to say too much to know where we need to go.

So I think if you’re doing something creative, like, being able to have that much intuition with another person, is really fun. It’s actually way more fun than writing by myself.

AP: Cool. Also, when it comes to working with other people, I heard that, when working on the new album, you worked with Clams Casino on a bunch of tracks and for production. How did that come about? I think that surprised a lot of people when they first heard about it.

LI: Oh yeah. We’re really big fans of Clams, and how he is able to squeeze so much emotion out of electronic music is something we were really inspired to do for this album. So we sent him our stuff, and he was actually a fan of Grown Unknown, so he already knew who I was and we tried to do some stuff remotely but it didn’t really work. So we decided to work together.

We had these production sessions where we set up at the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn and would just work on beats together and work on ideas. It was really fun and really fluid but I think, there were no really rules about what should happen or what we were exactly going for, just that we knew we wanted to work together and get these songs to a really good place. So yeah, he did additional production on like half the album.

AP: Did you also work with him on your covers of Pink Floyd [Wish You Were Here] and Syd Barrett [Late Night]?

LI: No, it was just for the new album.

AP: Ok. Are they big influences on your work?

LI: Yeah, I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan. I actually got asked to do that cover for MOJO Magazine for one of their compilations. I mean, it’s a really intimidating song, obviously because it’s so good. And like everyone knows it. I think it was the first time getting into the musicality of a band I really love, and that kind of set me off onto this whole trip of just getting into the head of Syd Barrett, and this was right before I started writing the new album, which I think was really influential. I mean the early Syd Barrett crazy psych stuff is so strange and so unique. I love it.

AP: Yeah, The Madcap Laughs is one of my favorite albums. I hear that you both have this great psych folk sound.

LI: Thanks!

AP: So, one last question, why ‘ice’? You have several songs that are titled with it, your last name, and the new album title.

LI: I mean there are a lot of reasons. Ices is named after a lot of things. Firstly, my favorite Bob Dylan song is called “Ices” and then the other stuff is just a play on words for me. It’s just a playful thing for me. It’s not always intentional, but I think as an elemant, I can find a lot of parallels in my emotional poetic world. So I just go for it.