Earlier this summer, pop singer Daya got away from it all in a weeklong trip with her family to Glacier National Park in Montana.

“It felt amazing. It’s so nice. My dad loves those trips. He loves doing a backpacking trip every year,” she said in a recent Zoom chat. “We grew up very immersed in nature, and we’ve been doing these trips now for the last four or so years. Honestly, I was just like, ‘OK, I’ll do this because my dad loves it.’ But I really end up looking forward to it because it’s just four days of no cell phone service, completely off the grid, no access to anything. And it totally refreshes mind, body and spirit for me.”

There were some unexpected close encounters with wildlife in the wilderness, but now the Mt. Lebanon native is looking to get back on the map with her sophomore album, “Til Every Petal Drops.”

The album, which drops on Friday, comes nine years after her breakthrough debut, 2016’s “Sit Still, Look Pretty,” when she was just 17. She made waves with her song “Hide Away” and then earned a Grammy for best dance recording for her appearance on The Chainsmokers’ “Don’t Let Me Down.” In the meantime, she’s released a pair of EPs as well as singles and collaborations with Gryffin, Illenium, RL Grime and Dom Dolla.

Now 26, Daya has teased the album with four singles — “Infrared,” “Demise,” “Agnostic” and “Bandit” — and can’t wait for the album to finally come out.

“It’s such a cool feeling. As a lot of people know, I haven’t put out an album in a long time, so this really feels like this project that I have poured everything into, and it feels really indicative of where I’m personally at in my life,” said Daya, who splits her time between Los Angeles and New York. “It’s just these songs that I’ve been working on for — the oldest one on the record is probably four years old. So for almost four years I’ve been working on this project as a whole, and it just feels surreal bringing it to life, and I’m just so excited for everyone to hear it.”

In a September Zoom conversation from New York, Daya spoke with TribLive about her growth between albums, the first singles, the 10-year anniversary of “Hide Away” and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.

A nine-year gap in between albums isn’t normal so how would you describe that time period?

(laughs) It’s hard because I felt like I was so in it, and it’s just hard to describe. There’s so many circumstances that were out of my control at the start. In addition to that, I think I also was just needing to take space on my own and process the early years of my career because I think that there was just a lot happening all at once. It was really amazing, incredible stuff. I felt so blessed to have been through it, but it was also really taxing on my body and emotionally.

As people know, I just went from basically being in high school to traveling the world and performing all the time. It was just all new stuff for me. So I think I needed some time to process that and reframe what I wanted to be as an artist, what I wanted to say through my music, how I wanted it. I think there’s a lot of development that I needed to go through artistically. I do feel like I’ve reached a point where now my team is the most encouraging and supportive team ever. And they’ve truly given me the reins creatively to do whatever I want with this album. That’s just a rare situation in the industry so I feel so lucky to be in that position. I think I was waiting for that a little bit, and I just feel really grateful for that. I feel really motivated by that. They were the ones that really helped me to finish this album up and get it out in the world. So I think it’s a combination of a lot of things.

Do you feel like you’ve grown or changed a lot in those nine years since the last album?

I think I have done some deep personal work and I have also just aged. I’ve gone through the most fundamental developmental years of my life. Living in L.A. too, I feel like I just was exposed to a lot, and I grew a lot from that. Just having been in the industry for almost a decade now, I feel like it ages you pretty quickly, but I think that I just have a much stronger hold on who I am, and I feel really grateful for that.

Were you able to do a lot of self-reflection on this album? What did you learn about yourself while doing that?

I think it’s probably my most introspective project that I’ve put out. I’ve put out some EPs over the last few years, and it feels like it’s really probing at these different parts of me. I think a lot of it does have the softer, more fragile, sensitive parts of me, but then some of it has these tough edges. I feel like I have just discovered more about myself, and the project as a whole I feel is about endurance. That’s a common theme and devotion, to love and to even these fleeting moments because I feel like a lot of the songs are about these fleeting relationship moments. I think it’s about wanting to preserve those moments and just a lot about endurance through that and through growing up and facing new challenges and trying to get through those.

Would you describe this as more “adult” material than maybe previous works?

Yeah, I think so. I definitely have been through several long-term relationships at this point. So it feels like it’s pulling from those as inspiration — and I’m in one right now — and it feels like it digs a lot deeper emotionally into who I am in those relationships and what I expect from my partner and using them as a mirror to tell me things about myself as well.

With the music, what were your sonic goals for the album? What did you want to have sound-wise? What were the inspirations?

I think it’s a blend of a lot. I honestly listen to so much stuff. I think the stuff that I started out with, kind of the more bubblegum pop, was a great segue into making music and my introduction to music. But I think I am naturally drawn to a lot of alternative stuff, a lot of indie rock and some soul stuff and more experimental electronic stuff. It honestly feels like a blend of a lot of different things. There’s a lot of electronic elements. There’s a lot of more organic instrumentation, more rock elements. It feels like the perfect melting pot of all those different influences.

There are three songs out right now: “Infrared,” “Demise” and “Agnostic.” Did you know right away that those would be singles? Did those stand out to you right away?

Not right away. I think as I sat with the music over time, I really wanted to have the singles represent different edges of the album. I think “Infrared” is on the more maybe experimental, ethereal side of the album. “Demise” is more straightforward pop rock, similar to some of my other songs I’ve released in the past. “Agnostic” also feels more soulful. I think I saw something in each of the songs. I think they all have these stories that feel really personal to me, but they also represent sonically these different sides of the album.

What set apart “Infrared” as the first song that you wanted to sort of introduce the album with?

It was produced by my friend Sebastian, who also produced the last single that I released before the album, which would have been last June called “Don’t Call.” So “Infrared” felt like the most natural progression from “Don’t Call,” even though it was probably one of the last songs to be written for the album. It just still felt like the best introduction or the best segue from “Don’t Call” into the rest of the album.

You had mentioned that you started working on this four years ago or some of the songs date back to that far. Do you have an example of one of those older songs that you’ve been sort of sitting on?

“Agnostic” actually is one of the oldest songs. There’s a few. There’s one in particular called “Matador,” which is probably the oldest, that has gone through a few different iterations production-wise. We’ve been trying to get it right for the past two years basically. It’s one of those songs without even having the full project in mind as we were working on it, but it kind of impossibly came together at the last minute before I had to turn in the album, and now it’s like the production, everything, it feels like it fits so well, and it’s hard to imagine that it didn’t at one point. I just knew the story, and it was just a great story, and I just loved the lyrics a lot. I just didn’t really want to let go of it, and I’m glad that I didn’t. But that’s probably one of the oldest.

In April, you also marked the 10-year anniversary of “Hideaway.” Does that 10 years, does that feel like a lifetime ago?

It does. (laughs) Yeah, it really feels like I have lived so many lives since then. It’s crazy. I was just looking back on photos and videos and stuff to post about it, and I can’t believe how much has changed since then and also how much hasn’t, like I’m still the same person And I still have the same desires. yeah, it’s crazy. Honestly, I feel so grateful for that time. I feel so amazed by the stamina of that song, too, like the fact that it still has these resurgences on the internet nine years later is crazy to me. I just feel so blessed for that song.

With where you are now, what would your message be to the 16-year-old you?

I would say, just keep going. Just keep doing your thing. Just be you as much as you can. It’s such old cliche advice, but it’s so true. It’s such a tough industry to be in when you’re that age and your mind isn’t fully developed biologically and you’re just trying to figure out yourself and you’re trying to figure out what you want, and it’s so easy to be steered in the wrong direction, or even in a direction that’s different from what you intuitively feel is best for you. So I would just say, try to stick to your gut as much as possible.

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With the new album, are there touring plans in the works, or is that something that’s still under discussion?

We haven’t formally discussed anything, but I would love to. I’ve been kind of touring over the past few years doing these one-off shows across the country and some international shows. I would really love to tour this album. I feel like it’s an album that lends itself so well to live instrumentation. That would be the dream to tour this album after it comes out.

Was the Tree of Life benefit concert the last time that you played in Pittsburgh? Does that sound right? That was 2018.

Yeah, it might have been. Yeah, that’s crazy. It feels so long ago. Wow. Yeah, we should change that for sure. (laughs)

Is there anything you miss about Pittsburgh?

Oh, yeah, I miss the people. You can’t get the people anywhere else. And I feel like every time I’m meeting someone new, and I feel like I can usually sense if it’s a Pittsburgh person, or I’m not surprised when people tell me that they’re from somewhere close to where I grew up in Mt. Lebanon, because there’s such a quality of person and quality of character there. It’s hard to find in other places. You don’t realize it until you leave and come back. I love my Pittsburgh people. It’s a beautiful place. I miss the rivers. I miss all of it.

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