After Blondshell’s European tour wrapped up in September, Sabrina Teitelbaum had around a month before the next leg of her U.S. tour started. That “off” time turned out to be quite productive.

“I’ve been writing a lot. I think when I don’t have pressure to write, I end up writing all the time. If I felt like, oh my gosh, I need to get new songs, I wouldn’t want to write. But since it’s just been time off, there’s no pressure to do anything creative, and thus I want to do a lot of creative stuff,” Teitelbaum said in a recent phone call. “So I’ve been writing and I’ve been going to the studio and hanging out with my dog and going to the park.”

Teitelbaum, who performs as Blondshell, made a high-profile appearance at the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas, joining Weezer on-stage for a performance of their “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams.”

”They just hit me up. I mean, they didn’t text me, not like that hit me up,” she said. “They hit us up and they were basically like, ‘Hey, we have this song that has blown up and we need a female vocalist, so can you come to Vegas and do this?’ And I was like, obviously. I had no warning time, but then I just went and did it.”

With just two days notice, Teitelbaum jumped at the opportunity, soaking up the Weezer greatest hits set at the emo/pop-punk festival, which also had acts like Blink-182, Avril Lavigne and Panic! at the Disco.

She also jumped on stage at the Wiltern in Los Angeles’ to perform “Arms” with Gigi Perez for the first time, in a tease for Blondshell’s deluxe album, “Another Picture,” which comes out Friday. (The new version adds covers from peers, reworked tracks with guest appearances and a new original to her “If You Asked for a Picture” album from May.)

“It was great. I love her. She’s just my friend, and it was so fun. … With Gigi, since I have that relationship with her, it didn’t feel like pressure,” she said. “With Weezer, I was like, you can’t get on stage as a guest and (mess) that up, so I practiced a lot for that.”

Blondshell’s If You Asked For a Tour hits Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale on Nov. 21, with locals Colatura opening. It’ll be her first Pittsburgh show, although she’s visited the city once before as her grandmother was born in the area but moved to L.A. as a child.

“I’ve been putting out music with this project for a few years, and I’ve never played any of it there, so it’s like meeting all those people for the first time,” said Teitelbaum, who added that HBO Max’s “The Pitt” has been her favorite show this year.

In a phone call from Los Angeles, Teitelbaum spoke with TribLive about “Another Picture,” covers, her “If You Asked for a Picture” album and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.

You have the “Another Picture” album coming out on Nov. 14, so where did the idea to do that come from?

I think it’s a classic thing to have your album come out and then put out some other version, whether it’s acoustic or it’s songs that didn’t initially fit the album or whatever. I wanted some sort of extension of it, and I always have loved this idea of having people you know or admire cover your songs and make it into this interpretation album. I’ve seen so many people do that, and I always love when those come out, so I knew for a while I wanted to do that. It just took a minute to figure out what artists were going to be on it. I think it’s so sick to hear your song through somebody else’s eyes.

What was that like to hear those covers for the first time? I imagine it’s got to feel a little bit different to hear an interpretation of something that you created.

I think when you put a song out, it’s not just yours anymore. And just hearing how those people hear it was so special. I love all of the artists on it, like Conor (Oberst) and John Glacier and all these people whose music I really love. It makes you hear your own song differently and makes you aware of the fact that your meaning for the song is something that changes depending on who’s listening to it or who’s singing it. That’s something that’s really cool about music in general.

Which of the covers surprised you the most?

The song’s not out yet, but Samia did something with it that I so didn’t expect. She just took it in a totally different direction, and her version of it, there’s a lot of joy in it and it’s really exciting. Those aren’t adjectives that I would use to describe that song, like joyful and exciting, but when she did it, I was like, wow, this feels like you can dance to this song. I love her voice and her music, so that one surprised me.

When you think of covers, or whenever you do covers yourself, are you looking for a note-by-note reproduction of it?

No, hell no.

What are you looking to hear?

That’s your thing. I’m inviting you to do this because I like what you do, not like I want your voice on exactly what I would do. I think melody is so integral to who somebody is as an artist. Your instincts for melody are so part of what you do. There are certain melodies that I gravitate towards. There’s certain melodies that Samia or Conor Oberst or any of these people would gravitate towards. That’s part of why I would ask someone to do it. It’s just how they hear the song and if they want to put different chords on it or anything like that. You’re asking them to bring their artistry to it.

“Berlin TV Tower” is the new song on the deluxe album, so did that stem from the same sessions as the album?

No, that was after the album. It was like six months after I recorded the album, and I was wishing I had written it earlier. I would never put out a project where it’s just like, oh yeah, this is something that didn’t make the album because we didn’t like it enough. This didn’t make the album because I didn’t write it in time. And it otherwise would have. It fits the world of the album. I’ve been playing that song live. All the shows that we’ve done since the album has come out, I played that song. So it feels like part of the same world.

Your album “If You Asked For a Picture” came out earlier this year, so with that album, what did you figure out or learn about yourself while making it?

I think it’s sort of like when you wake up, and you can’t really remember your dream, and then if you talk to somebody about it, you can start to remember it. I think with songs, it’s all the stuff that’s sitting under your conscious everyday thinking level. So it brings stuff up that you don’t really know you’re thinking about. With this album, there were a lot of questions that kept coming up, like what kind of life do I want to have? I think being an artist is sort of like, you’re choosing to poke at bruises all the time. One of the reasons that I love Charli XCX’s album is because I think if you summarize it, it’s an album about being an artist. I think just by writing songs, you’re constantly asking questions and being uncomfortable in different ways. So I guess what I learned is just that I had all these questions in the first place. Otherwise, you’re just going about your day, and you’re going to one place, then going to another place, and you’re not thinking about this stuff. But by making an album, I think you’re choosing to really look at what’s going on on a subconscious level.

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With all those questions, did you find any answers or are these just questions that you just need to still think about?

I think the answers come entirely separate from the music. I think the answers, all the questions that I was asking about on the album, are not questions that you would get a definitive yes or no to. The question of what kind of life I want to live or what kind of person I want to be or what kind of artist I want to be, those are things where the answers to those questions change all the time. So I didn’t really get answers. (laughs)

Did you feel more confident and assured with this album? Because I know that sometimes people have struggles with their second album compared to debuts.

I think there were certain voices that were louder that weren’t there when I was making the first album. You can think about, are people going to like this? And I think that’s a natural part of the process. If you’ve never made an album before, you don’t think about that because the question is more like, is anyone going to hear it? And the second album is like, are people going to like it? So that did come up for me, but I think it was outweighed by the fact that I was more confident in the studio because it wasn’t my first time. We did a lot of work between the first album and the second album in the studio. We did a lot of one-off stuff and covers and being part of other people’s projects and we worked a lot, so I felt like I had a lot more experience than when I went in the first time.

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