On Reaper, the opening track from Kelsey Lu's new second LP, So Help Me God, the 35-year-old cellist and songwriter sets the tenor for the record by diving right into the big questions.

It starts out, Lu says, as "a conversation between myself and myself, and myself and God and death."

"There's questioning and contradicting myself. Questioning faith, questioning what I believed to be true, [questioning] music and my mental state. My exploration of drugs and being medicated, because of being diagnosed with ADHD and depression and anxiety and being on the spectrum."

Arriving seven years after Lu's debut album, 2019's Blood, it's a grand, ambitious work about "surrender[ing] to change and transformation" and "the questioning of self".

Speaking with The International Pop Underground's Anthony Carew, Lu takes us on a conversational journey through their sex life, Balinese water ceremonies, womb healing, rejecting religion, finding God, questioning music-biz careerism, scoring the movie Earth Mama, and so much more.

Feature image: Alima Lee