Katy Pinke is a Manhattan-based singer-songwriter, painter and actor and her self-titled debut album is out now on the new Glamour Gowns label. The songs on her album possess a direct and inviting quality, but within each, a quiet battle is being waged in an ongoing struggle to, as Pinke puts it, “unconditionally love a fragmented self.” The album strips Pinke’s art down to its absolute essence. At the home studio of Phil Weinrobe (Adrianne Lenker, Cass McCombs), she recorded her vocals and minimal guitar accompaniments live with drummer Jeremy Gustin in front of an audience of a few friends. The idea was to capture the energy of Pinke’s live shows—storied events in the NYC indie rock scene. Katy’s music is best described as experimental folk, inspired by the odd song structures and conversationality of artists like Bill Callahan and Aldous Harding with a lithe vocal delivery reminiscent of The Roches and Connie Converse. She’s a really respected figure in the NYC scene and she also regularly plays in Delicate Steve’s band. The record’s most devastating moments are sometimes also its most fun (“Tomato,” “One Coin”). Elsewhere, there are bittersweet moments of effortless beauty (“Grapefruit,” “Strawman”). In Pinke’s music, life sometimes feels like a series of pushes into a vast, hopeful unknown, and the time spent conserving our energy in between them. All we can do, she hypothesizes, is try to stay in tune with ourselves while waiting for the next opportunity to try again.