Lael Neale joins Breaking and Entering to discuss her new album Altogether Stranger. Songs are drawn from her final months in Los Angeles, mornings spent writing in a small bungalow overlooking Sunset Boulevard. It continues the spare, textured sound sparked by her discovery of the Omnichord in 2019, with lyrics that capture the strangeness of seeing the city with an outsider's eyes.

Neale explores the tension between belonging and alienation, moving between her family farm in rural Virginia and LA's concrete sprawl. The sense of feeling like "an extraterrestrial landing on a dystopian planet" is carried through a companion film, which follows Neale as a mirror-suited alien through the city.

Despite global uncertainties, Neale maintains belief in the necessity of hope. She draws inspiration from the natural world around her Virginia farm: "There's a mockingbird that keeps making a nest and she keeps losing her babies… but she keeps making a new nest and having new eggs... No matter how tragic and destructive things are, we have to have the hope to keep going. Nature is hopeful against all odds."

The conversation explores her observations - a mockingbird rebuilding its nest, houses under circling helicopters - and how she transforms these moments into poetic reflections on the world.

Altogether Stranger is out now via Sub Pop Records. You can follow Lael Neale on Substack at Consensual Sound.