BANKS is a pop star. But she’s also something of an enigma. The Californian songwriter doesn’t do a great number of interviews, instead preferring to angle the spotlight towards her music.

In autumn 2016 she released her second album, ‘The Altar’. She recently completed her first European headline tour since it came out. I met her in a London hotel room a short distance from the venue she was playing that night at Camden’s Roundhouse – the final night of her tour before she returned to the States.

In person she’s both polite and honest, grateful for the life her music has afforded her but also learning to deal with its pitfalls.

In this episode we talked about the city (she recorded her early ‘London EP’ in the UK), how her music comes purely from her gut instinct, the psychological toll of touring, where she’d like to travel and why it wouldn’t feel right giving her songs away to another artist.

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