Tei Shi’s debut album, Crawl Space, proves that the 26-year-old is not only accepting, but celebrating her wisdom and she’s a better artist because of it. On her compilation’s introduction, we hear a much younger version of the singer, also known as Valerie Teicher, on a crackling lo-fi recording presumably by her Argentinian parents. They speak in muffled Spanish as they document their toddler, just figuring out how to speak into a mic—she innocently asks her father: “So you have to talk there?”

The song that follows is Tei Shi grown up. On the first single, “Keep Running,” she sings in her pillowy-soft tone over echoing bass and percussion. She remarks, “Every time I look over my shoulder, I’m getting older.” It’s a rarity that an artist make a compilations that ties together so neatly into a thematic bow, but which each song, she divulges her findings as the hourglass runs and she does it with a confidence in her artistry that we’ve never heard from her before.

The best way we can describe what she’s offering is half Robyn, half FKA Twigs. You can sway a bit to every song, but she breaks it up and slows it down every so often—like when she speaks of her memories of an old lover on “Baby.” The electronics dissipate and instruments, like piano, strings, and drums, take over because her talent doesn’t need to hide behind synths. She can still keep her audience in a trance while the singer/songwriter questions whether to abandon the comfortable choice.

She isn’t pretending like it’s always easy to move forward. Sometimes you have to push yourself and push down the voices that make you want to sit in insecurities. A Tei Shi from the past returns on “Bad Singer,” slightly older than the album’s opener, but still distant from the Tei Shi of today. She tells the recorder, “I’m a bad singer, can’t do anything well/ Think I sing so great, but I really never do anything right/ I just hope one day, I can be like Britney Spears.”

The most radio-friendly of them all, “Crawl,” is also Tei Shi at her most self-assured. It thumps quickly with complex synth arrangements with the reverb turned up.  She speaks to inspire her listeners on making their own future: ” If you know what you seek/ Put your legs into it / ‘Cause, baby, you crawl / Then you walk, then you run the show.” It’s an anthem.

No doubt Tei Shi has always been pretty to listen to. On her 2015 EP, Verde, she introduced herself as a slinky and sensual indie darling with vocals as kindly uninhibited as her curls. However, on her debut LP,  she is ready to unveil herself as a ferocious woman, harnessing vulnerability for a powerful performance. She’s ready to enrapture, to step off the opener’s stage into the headlining slot.