I got hooked on Horsegirl—the swiftly up-and-coming, New York City-by-way-of-Chicago post-punk trio—inadvertently, when streaming “Phonetics On and On” with the on-repeat setting clicked-on green. Before I knew it, the afternoon was spent, synchronized in lockstep with the album’s 11 tunes, again and again, blurring the line between songs and when the album had ended and began once again. It’s a credit to the kinetic production by Cate Le Bon and the songwriting, where everything you’re hearing is absolutely necessary and precise, that this sophomore album for Matador Records is a triumph. I’d say it surpasses their debut, “Versions of Modern Performance”, which was no slouch, by shedding the distortion in favor of a refined propulsion and ear worms at every turn.

I was entranced, but also somehow miraculously, got all the day’s errands done, as if Horsegirl’s album had soundtracked my workaday life, merging with the action and recasting it in sharp relief to its own wiry whir.  I try to frame this experience as the compliment it’s meant as to Horsegirl’s Nora Cheng over Zoom.

This interview was edited for space and clarity.

Style: How do you enjoy listening to music? 

Nora Cheng (Horsegirl): That’s a good question. It can be hard to just focus, but we talk about this thing when we write a song. Sometimes we just like to play it back while we have a conversation, and that’s the “background check,” if it facilitates a nice vibe. That could also mean it doesn’t grab your attention; it’s a bad song. But I do listen to music when I work. I like to cook and I like to put on a CD in the living room, you know? But I still feel like in high school, it was constantly playing and it’s not as much anymore. I do appreciate the silence as well sometimes. A long walk is nicer when you’re not listening to anything. It’s kind of like a moment of pause. But obviously it’s very important to me.

Is there a preferred way you want people to hear your new album? 

I feel like any way it happens makes sense. I think that listening to it from beginning to end, in a focused way, is what we want. We made something that we want to be listened to in that way, but we also wanted all the songs to stand on their own.

I’m excited about the potential of getting music in films, because I know that so many times when I watch a movie, I get a lot of the music I listen to from movies. And because it’s in the movie, it kind of feels more powerful or adds another dimension. So that’s something that I’m excited about.

What’s an instance where you were really drawn to a soundtrack? 

Well, literally, I saw this movie two nights ago, “I Hired A Contract Killer” [dir. Aki Kaurismäki]. Joe Strummer was in the movie and he was playing at this dinky bar, just him and an electric guitar, and there’s some guy on like, bongos or something. I don’t know what drum it was. But it was just this very strange scene where they let this whole song play and it was very entrancing. I also think it’s sweet when, within a movie, the artist is the artist within the movie. Do you know what I mean? Like, they’re on the stage singing their own songs, but it’s part of the movie world.

Was sequencing the new album something that you put a lot of thought into?

Yeah, definitely. There’s no science to it, but we tried a bunch of different sequences. And this is the one that felt the most right. But, I think it starts with, you know, the under two-minute pop song, and then, we put in some slower ones after you’ve warmed up to it. But it was very important. I really appreciate when an album feels kind of like a journey.

You’ve done three music videos for this record. Do you enjoy coming up with the concepts for those? 

Yeah. We actually did four this time, but one of them was kind of like closer to the end. And we did that one all ourselves. So the budget is way low budget. We used to make all the music videos ourselves and it was fulfilling, but it was also super stressful and a big time suck. So we were really excited about the possibility of working with actual people in the field. We had a big list of inspirations and influences—things we found interesting, music videos, but some of them were performance art or just short films or something that wasn’t directed, just a video or something somewhere. So we tried to convey what this world we saw was to these directors, and then they came in with a specific concept and we worked on that together.

I feel like they all got it. We were all really happy, and I feel like that’s in line—this album was the first time we let another person, Cate Le Bon, into our process. It was really just the three of us the whole time because we didn’t trust anyone else. And also I think we were maybe too young to know how to collaborate. Collaborating can be harder than just doing whatever you want. So all of those, the process of making those music videos, turned out to be very fulfilling.

Would you work with Cate Le Bon for the next album, or would you want to try something different? 

It was a really good experience and I feel like she obviously brought elements of her music to it. It sounds like her hands got on it a little bit. But she still did a good job being faithful to how we had originally wrote these songs, to the demos we had. It just felt like a pretty good match.

I’m wondering if this album will be a document of that collaboration, or more so the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Totally. I think it could be either. I would really love to work with her again.

I shouldn’t say friendship, I mean “working relationship.” 

Totally. But we did become friends.

Horsegirl play Richmond on March 24. Do you have any connection to the city or past experience here? 

I have been to Richmond. I’ve always thought it was really cool and I feel like it’s the one place besides Chicago that seems to have, it feels kind of similar in terms of how the music scene is actually. I mean, based on the small number of people I know from Richmond. But I’ve always thought it’d be kind of cool to live there at some point.

It’s just so much smaller—

Yes, this is true, but I guess the music scene in Chicago, the people I was friends with, it did feel very small as well, even though it’s such a big city. So maybe that was part of it. But yeah, we played there, maybe like two summers ago. And we had some friends, so we played our show and then they took us to the Richmond spots.

Do you remember any of your Richmond highlights? 

I don’t remember the name of this place, but they took us to this strange diner. I think I got mozzarella sticks and then we sat on some sort of big green park. I wish I knew more details, but I liked it.

Is touring a satisfying way to travel for you? 

Yeah. It can be hard. It can feel like you go to all of these cool places and then you don’t actually get a chance to understand what they’re like, or to see anything aside from like the one strip that the venue’s on. You do get a sense of the kind of types of people from just being in that room where you’re playing the show. I’m sure we’ve made some crazy generalizations about places just based on one person we met at one show that we played there. But it’s also just nice to look out the window when you’re driving and see the landscapes changing. When you have an off day in a place, you actually get an opportunity to understand and see it.

Would you give us a snapshot of the Horsegirl van on the road? 

It changes ’cause there are the days when we are very much to ourselves, just looking for our own music, maybe reading a book or something. And then there’s the other times when the music is super loud. When we’re very excited we will sing along and scream. Or sometimes we just have the music turned kind of low, as something in the background, and we have a conversation.

It’s a multipurpose space, but we always keep a lot of snacks. We keep a lot of snacks in the van and we always keep leftovers from places we eat for too long, or we eat them way too long after we got them. So, in a way, that’s kind of gross. But when you get riders at shows you get so much food and you really don’t wanna waste it.

Being in the van is the one place that I don’t get car sick, oddly, so I’m able to function normally in there. But yeah, it’s kinda like an altered space.

It sounds like at this point, you enjoy touring?

Yeah. It can be weird and repetitive and kind of like numbing, or it can just really take it out of you. But I feel positively about this upcoming one. The team we have are people that I really trust and we’re kind of more experienced now, so I’m excited.

Are you gonna try to find, say, mozzarella sticks the next time you’re in  Richmond? Or is there anything else you want to seek out? 

I would be interested in seeing more Richmond. Do you have any recommendations?

Send your Richmond recommendations to Horsegirl and don’t miss them when they play Monday, March 24 for Sonic Dustbowl Vol. XI at the Warehouse with Free Range, Good Flying Birds, Keep and Hypochondriac. Doors are at 7 p.m. and cost $18 advance and $20 at the door.