Pop culture loves honesty, provided it arrives with flattering light, a clean edit and a release plan. Artists are encouraged to reveal themselves, then package that revelation into a version the public can understand within seconds. Naming an album Honest places Zoe directly inside that contradiction.

Her second record arrived on August 10, only six months after Closure. On a calendar, six months looks brief. For a songwriter, it can contain changes of mind, new priorities and a very different understanding of what deserves a public life. Two albums in one year also change the stakes. An introduction becomes a body of work, and a promising voice begins developing a clear point of view. Honest arrives after the first impression and before the audience has settled on a fixed idea of Zoe. It is a particularly good moment for a conversation. Here is Zoe, in her own words.

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Which version of honesty became the album’s emotional centre, and when did you feel ready to share it publicly?

I think the center of Honest is being seen without immediately wanting to cover yourself back up. In the title track I say, “I can’t help but feel like I am bare / I’m undone,” but later I’m “unashamed.” That change is really important to me. The honesty isn’t confessing something terrible. It’s realizing that I can be completely exposed emotionally and still feel safe. “I am my truest beside you” probably says it most clearly. I was ready to share the album when I realized that vulnerability didn’t have to sound weak. A lot of this record is actually about how freeing it can be.

When did you leave the emotional world of Closure and recognize that a different voice was taking over?

Closure spends a lot of time looking at what hurt and trying to understand what happened. Honest feels more like I stepped outside of that room. There’s still vulnerability here, especially in songs like “Northern Hues,” but there’s also desire, confidence, frustration, faith and this huge appetite for life. By the time I’m saying “I’m insatiable” in “Field of Flowers,” I’m not asking the past to explain itself anymore. I want to experience things. That was probably the biggest difference for me. Closure needed answers. Honest wants to live.

In the title track, what does honesty cost the person speaking?

I actually don’t think honesty costs her something in this song. I think hiding does. At the beginning she feels bare and undone, which could be frightening, but being under this person’s gaze doesn’t make her want to disappear. It makes her feel alive. That’s why “you keep me honest” means more to me than simply telling the truth. This person makes it difficult for her to be anything other than herself. By the time she says she’s unashamed, the thing that initially felt like exposure has become freedom.

What did Honest sound like in its earliest rough demo, and which element already carried the identity of the finished track?

The emotional idea was always the important part: that strange feeling of being completely exposed by someone and somehow feeling safer because of it. The song needed to move from “I’m bare, I’m undone” into “suddenly alive, I’m unashamed.” I didn’t want the production to overpower that transition. Even as the song developed, the identity was always in that push and pull between vulnerability and confidence. It starts almost like being caught and ends like being freed.

Which lyric on the album asked for the greatest restraint from your voice, and how did a quieter delivery change its meaning?

“Burn Out” needed that from me because the song isn’t really about a dramatic breakdown. It’s about something I think is almost scarier—numbness. “I don’t know what to feel / I’m over everything.” There’s this contradiction underneath the song where you can have things you once wanted and still reach a point where none of it feels like anything. I didn’t want to sing that like I was begging someone to notice I was exhausted. The restraint makes it sound like the exhaustion has already won for a moment. You’re not screaming anymore. You’re just tired.

Which two tracks on Honest revealed an unexpected connection once you placed them beside each other?

Definitely “Burn Out” and “Field of Flowers.” They almost sound like two versions of the same person waking up on different days. In “Burn Out,” I’m saying, “I don’t know what to feel / I’m over everything.” Then “Field of Flowers” comes in and suddenly I’m “insatiable.” I want movement, weather, flowers, experience—I want to soak in the moment. I love them beside each other because “Field of Flowers” doesn’t pretend burnout never happened. It feels like the senses turning back on after being numb. That transition became one of my favorite parts of the album.

Which kind of listener do you picture connecting with the album most deeply?

Probably someone who contradicts themselves a lot emotionally, because I definitely do on this album. “Lean In” is basically saying, stop trying to explain this and just let yourself want it. “Northern Hues” can be deeply devoted even when that devotion starts affecting how you see yourself. “Burn Out” is exhausted with everything, and then “Field of Flowers” wants everything. I think that’s much more human than pretending growth means you reach some perfectly healed version of yourself. The person I picture listening is someone who can be overwhelmed, ambitious, in love, tired, spiritual and still hungry for more life at the same time.

How do you decide when a real experience belongs in a song and when it still belongs entirely to you?

I think I hide things inside images a lot. I don’t always need to tell you exactly who, where or what happened for you to understand what it felt like. “Mont Blanc,” “Northern Hues,” “Field of Flowers”—even the landscapes throughout the record let me talk about something personal without turning the song into a diary entry. “Mont Blanc” especially has that feeling of refusing to let someone else decide what your experience means. So I can tell the emotional truth and still keep parts of the actual story for myself. That’s probably my boundary.

Which ambition still gives you energy today, and which one have you outgrown?

I haven’t outgrown ambition at all. If anything, “Field of Flowers” probably tells on me there because “I’m insatiable” is very real. I still want to see what happens if I keep going. I want the music to travel farther than I have. I want to perform it in places I haven’t been and have people I don’t know find themselves in it. What I’m trying to outgrow is the version of ambition that appears in “Burn Out,” where reaching one thing immediately creates another thing you have to chase. I don’t want accomplishment to become something I’m incapable of feeling.

What would you hope the Zoe making album three has learned, and which part of your current self would you want her to protect?

I hope she has learned that she doesn’t have to explain every creative instinct before following it. There’s a line running through this album from trying to understand everything to simply being present—“Lean In” does it through attraction, “Grounded” literally brings me back through 5-4-3-2-1 and into the moment, “Field of Flowers” does it through experience, and “Holy Water” eventually does it through faith. I want album-three Zoe to trust that instinct faster.

But I would protect the hunger. I don’t want to become so polished that I stop writing things like “I’m insatiable,” or so careful that I stop admitting “I’m over everything.” Those contradictions are probably where I recognize myself the most. And ending with “Holy Water” matters to me because after everything else on the record—love, pressure, exhaustion, wanting more—the final place I arrive isn’t having everything figured out. It’s grace.