Photograph by Olof GrindIn the music video for “Lost Boys”—the first single from Phoebe Bridgers’s new solo album, “Lost Weekend,” out today—the singer revives something of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, but this time in a medieval motorcycle mashup. She’s an elfish empress in chunky sneakers. And those boys? They “never grow up, never get old.” But it’s not clear, in the lyrics, whether Bridgers is chasing or being chased by them. That is, until the last notes: “Lost boys, come find me.” Mitch Therieau, who reviewed the new album, calls that final line “an incredible moment of rock-and-roll reconciliation, on par with the climactic ‘You are forgiven!’ in the Who’s ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away.’ ” Mitch and I recently spoke about Bridgers, her songwriting skills, her fans, and our favorite tracks.Our conversation has been edited and condensed.First things first: How does this album stack up against her previous ones?Phoebe Bridgers, to me, is the kind of artist who has two or three basic templates for a song. And when you listen to her albums you notice that she has this set of material that she is permuting, polishing, honing into new forms. So, in a way, there’s a consistency among her three solo albums, but there is also a straightforward, linear evolution.I think “Stranger in the Alps” is a great album, but I think “Punisher” is better than “Stranger in the Alps.” And I think this new one, “Lost Weekend,” is a better album than “Punisher.” It builds on some of the strengths of “Punisher,” in particular how that album reconciles a kind of introspective perspective with a wider lens to the world. But, sonically, “Lost Weekend” is a lot deeper and a lot weirder. It’s a riskier album.Do you have a favorite song from “Lost Weekend”?“Liberty Tree.” It has a kind of four-on-the-floor pulse, and a plucky, clattery riff that forms the bedrock of the song, plus her classic double-tracked vocals. It’s really catchy. Tonally, it does the thing I love most in music: some pretty miserable lyrics in a shiny, jaunty package.Is there one that you’re less keen on?“Kill Me” doesn’t really do it for me. It’s a dirge that builds into a big cathartic outro with some nice harmony vocals from a certain “Son-John Johnson,” almost certainly a pseudonym for the rising indie-rock star Cameron Winter. (His voice is hard to mistake.) Neither part has quite enough melodic interest for me personally. But it’s the only skip for me on this record.In your review, you call Bridgers “one of her generation’s standout songwriters.” Can you say more about why you, and so many others, feel this way?It’s kind of a magic trick that she pulls with her lyrics, right? Because a lot of what she writes is hyper-specific, about these very personal experiences. But something about the way that she processes her material in her poetic imagination, and then sets it to melody and arrangement, makes these private experiences—which are usually pretty depressive—capacious enough that people can enter into them, or see themselves in them.My favorite Bridgers song is maybe—and maybe weirdly—“So Much Wine,” from that beautifully depressing Christmassy EP she did.I don’t know that one! She does so much stuff, and a lot of it is really weird. Remember when she did a cover of “Goodbye to Love” for the “Minions: The Rise of Gru” soundtrack? I blame Jack Antonoff for that one. Although, Antonoff and Alex G are the big, marquee names that joined her usual production crew for this new album. One can speculate as to which touch is whose handiwork, but, whatever the division of labor was, they created something sonically new on this record.What’s your favorite Bridgers song?I’m the kind of music listener who enjoys an unhindered dopamine-delivery pathway, which makes her music kind of a rich challenge for me. But I’m also basic. I listened to “Me and My Dog” again the other night, for the first time in a long time. That was the song that introduced me, and I think a lot of other people, to her genius. And, damn, it holds up. I don’t think it’s as sophisticated as the music on “Lost Weekend”—she’s made strides in her craft since then—but there’s something in the meandering, unguarded nature of the song, with that Indigo Girls arena-rock chorus at the end, that’s just really indelible.Illustration by Bina Thorsen; Source photographs from GettyThe youngest woman elected to Congress has been documenting her egg-freezing experience on social media. “Spoiler,” Anna Russell writes, “people were weird about it.” Read or listen to the story »More Top StoriesThese days, when bots outnumber real people online, the ancient business of proving who you are has never been stranger—or more lucrative.What’s the value of an hour? If the world seems to waste our time, Joshua Rothman suggests, it’s partly because we view time itself as a resource to be extracted and optimized.Toons have seldom been loonier than in the new movie “Coyote vs. Acme,” which was loosely adapted from a 1990 New Yorker piece by Ian Frazier.The most-clicked item in yesterday’s newsletter was about whether being the D.N.C. chair is the worst job in Washington.A book: The Brontë Sisters, as Juliet Barker’s biography reveals, may not have been who we thought they were.A podcast: “Dan Taberski’s Manifesto” argues that, done right, a manifesto is a nonviolent call to action, an “artful scream”—and, perhaps, just what we need right now.A show: You can see Phoebe Bridgers at the Barclays Center in September. This is just one of many cultural happenings our critics have highlighted in our fall season preview.Today’s Crossword Puzzle: “Sesame Street” character who wears a horizontally striped sweater—five letters.Catalogues: Can you sort the items into the correct order?Shuffalo: Can you make a longer word with each new letter?“I bet we’re missing some great package deliveries.”Cartoon by Ali SolomonP.S. “We waded into the bay one late afternoon as the tide had almost finished / pulling all the way out,” Marie Howe writes in her poem “Low Tide, Late August.” 🌊