When Kate Nash opens her mouth, words fall out: “I got an amazing bunny rabbit for my birthday. She’s called Fluffy. She’s like my best friend. We found out that she had cancer. Then I had a conversation with someone about being vegetarian, and they were like, ‘You should be vegetarian.’ I was like, I like eating meat. But then it popped into my brain that if I didn’t eat animals, maybe Fluffy would be okay. I was being OCD, like, if I didn’t do this, then something bad would happen. So I stopped eating meat. She’s had the operation now, but I’m still doing it. But if anyone ever says to me, ‘I’m thinking of going vegetarian,’ I’m like, No, no, no. Don’t go vegetarian. My favorite thing is cheeseburgers.”

The quality of mind on display in this soliloquy—inspired by a basket of fried chicken delivered to a corner booth at Williamsburg’s Brooklyn Bowl, where Nash is about to prove she knows her way around a strike—should be recognizable to anyone who has heard Made of Bricks, the 22-year-old musician’s award-winning, platinum-selling debut album. There’s the same idiosyncratic logic, voluble bigheartedness, quirky enthusiasm and talent for turning even the dreariest minutiae into a compelling yarn.

Nash’s sophomore offering, this month’s My Best Friend Is You, contains all of these traits plus an extra splash of attitude. The young Brit returns to the themes behind Made of Bricks’ lead single “Foundations”—about a romance that’s over in all but appearance—and delves even deeper into the dark side of relationships, despite being in a good one herself. She sings about jealousy, cheating boyfriends and, in “Mansion Song,” delivers a rant about sex that channels Ani DiFranco by way of Ozzy Osbourne (“I can get fucked and be fucked like the best of men,” she sneers). Groupies inspired “Mansion Song,” says Nash, explaining, “I don’t like to see people sell themselves short. I had this one girl confess to me while crying that she gave someone a blow job in the toilets. You should fuck people ’cause you feel good about yourself, not because you feel bad.”

On “Do-Wah Doo,” the album’s lead single, Nash takes aim at mean girls, a group with whom she’s had considerable experience. “I was locked in a cupboard by evil girls when I was 17,” says Nash, recalling one of her more scarring run-ins. “I hate people who are mean in a really subtle way because you can never say anything. But this was so blatant. Literally, these girls were making my life miserable. I was at school and I was shut in this cupboard. I rang my best friend to get me out. He was really skinny and nerdy, so he got locked in as well. We just sat there.” But knowing Nash, she probably used that time to tell her friend one hell of a story.

Photography by Zoey Grossman Hair and Makeup Jordan Long @ excLusive artists ManageMent.