TORRES knows the darkness. The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter otherwise known as Mackenzie Scott waits until anything—an idea, an emotion, a memory—gnaws at her, tearing at her fingers and throat until she releases it in song. Following her self-titled debut in 2013, TORRES pushes herself to even noisier extremes on her new album ‘Sprinter’, a punishing self-examination of epic spiritual and musical proportions, to be released Friday May 8th 2015 on POD via Inertia.

Much anticipation for ‘Splinter’ waits with Scott slotted on both TIME Magazine and NME’s esteemed ones to watch lists for 2015. An excitement that has only heightened following Scott’s busy schedule at the US South By South West festival in Austin this week, performing at showcases and parties held by Pitchfork and AV Club among others. Previously Scott has collaborated with Sharon Van Etten and The War On Drugs for her own song “New Skin” off her self-titled debut, as well as singing on Sharon’s latest record ‘Are We There’.

‘Sprinter’ was co-produced by Robert Ellis (PJ Harvey); and Portishead’s Adrian Utley. With his guitar riffs and synthesizers lingering in the background like a lowland mist and PJ Harvey’s Robert Ellis and Ian Oliver on rhythm—the two fortuitously reuniting 23 years after the release of ‘Dry’, and in Scott’s 23rd year of living—she crafted a “space cowboy” record. “That’s as simply as I can say it,” says Scott, who cites inspirations as diverse as Funkadelic and Nirvana, Ray Bradbury and Joan Didion. “I wanted something that very clearly stemmed from my Southern conservative roots but that sounded futuristic and space-y at the same time.”

A keen awareness of Scott’s place in her family and in the world suffuses ‘Sprinter’, contributing to themes of alienation throughout. “You’re just a firstborn feeling left behind,” she sings on the ominously brewing “Son, You Are No Island,” which references one of Scott’s influences on this record: English poet John Donne’s 1624 poem “Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.”

Available for fans to pre-order on iTunes now, and hailed by Rolling Stone as “a force to be reckoned with,” TORRES’ sophomore album ‘Sprinter’ is an embodiment of just that, rendering her with a ferocity and intensity that is bound only to ascend.