What happens when you’re tortured for what feels like an eternity? What if you’re forced to deal with fame, love and lapses in creativity, all on top of the constant emergence of COVID variants and political turmoil? You learn to roll with the punches, around each lap of an endless motordrome race. That may sound like a lot, but that’s the energy MØ learns to channel throughout her new album, Motordrome. And it’s most evident in closing track “Punches,” where she does just that.

“I thought I did it for the right reasons/ But they got lost on the plane,” she sings. A twinkling electronic beat supports her as she builds herself up to cross the perceived threshold before realizing that singing her favorite song is where she’ll learn to be bold. It features tamer production than most of the album, landing as a final, soft blow for the refined project.

The Danish singer-songwriter blew up in 2015 with internationally successful collaboration “Lean On,” with Major Lazer, that ultimately went on to sell more than 10 million copies in the U.S. alone. She’s had some success in the year’s following with singles like “Final Song,” though not as much as she might deserve. If we’re looking to do her right, take a listen to Motordrome.

It runs just over half an hour across 10 tracks, a collection of straight-up Scandi-pop. The songs aren’t necessarily something we haven’t heard before, but they’re written and produced with a formula that works and are executed with MØ’s undeniably catchy voice.

Featuring electronic production, often accented with strings or pianos, the songs build and crescendo one after another. The first track, “Kindness,” does just that, opening with a sharp violin that’s quickly blended with a scratching electric beat that helps distort her voice ever so slightly. When she feels like the whole world is talking at once, she takes a step back and asks a lover to, “Let me in, shake me out of my shell/ I wanna feel like myself again.”

Her stamina maintains through another heartache on “Live to Survive,” the album’s lead single. Another synth-driven song, it features effects that sound like they’re being swirled up to ultimately be squashed back down as each verse and chorus follow one another. It’s almost repetitive, as she switches just a word to two through the chorus, singing, “I live to survive another heartache/ I live to survive another mistake/ I live to survive another heartache.”

She continues to praise vulnerability on one of the album’s most electronic cuts, “Cool to Cry,” where she asks why someone is holding all their feelings on the inside. “We live in world of distractions/ Trade insanity for some action,” she proclaims, building up and validating her subject’s feelings.

MØ conjures a Hollywood moment on “Brad Pitt,” telling her lover she sees them as the megastar and herself as none other than Juliette. The opening lyric oozes with sexuality, sounding like something Lana Del Rey would have written: “You don’t have to be born into success/ To get the blood pumping underneath my summer dress.” Whew! He must really be handsome.

The album’s most tame track comes with “Goosebumps” on which MØ sounds like SIA. “Oh come on easy rider/ Lift your voice up to the sky,” she sings before the piano crescendos, and her voice peaks in “oohs!” “Hip Bones” picks things back up again and builds with energy and love. The bridge features a grinding electric guitar solo that pushes the song to new heights.

MØ has crafted an album that shows the tough layer of skin she’s developed through achieving international success and the chaos of the pandemic. If you listen to it, you may feel just as empowered. And who doesn’t want that?

Follow Domenic Strazzabosco at Twitter.com/domenicstrazz and Instagram.com/domenicstrazz.