Alice Merton never harbored dreams of superstardom. Then, “No Roots” came along and accelerated her music career in unexpected ways. But along with the success and radio airplay, it brought pressure. Fans were suddenly expecting an album, and she only had a handful of songs at the time.

Over her first two albums, 2019’s MINT and 2022’s S.I.D.E.S., the singer-songwriter, who’s bounced around between Canada, Germany and England, built a devoted following. In her native Germany, she’s a star, appearing as a coach on that country’s version of “The Voice” and more recently performing for thousands in front of the famed Brandenburg Gate for the country’s New Year’s festivities last December.

Merton didn’t return to the U.S. in 2022 or 2023 to headline a tour supporting her sophomore album, but rather chose a few select dates opening for others like Bastille. This spring, she’s testing the waters with a slate of smaller club shows as she gears up to release new EP HERON. The buzz of “No Roots” has calmed, but she said she’s happy to play in front of fans on merit rather than hype.

“I want to be the artist that is in it for the long run that is kind of someone you can count on,” she said, chatting recently from her home studio in London, to which she’d recently moved back from Frankfurt, Germany. “I want to be the consistent thing in your life that brings you joy because it comes back.”

The EP was preceded by Alice Merton releasing single “pick me up” and “run away girl.” She wrote the latter with James Dring (Lana Del Rey) and frequent collaborator Paul Whalley, and released on her label Paper Plane Records. The song shows off Merton’s unique introspection—vague enough to connect with listeners and specific enough to allow them to get to know her on a personal level.

On “run away girl,” Merton is still trying to find her true essence, purpose as an artist and where she fits into the world at a time—adulthood—she once presumed she’d have the answers. When she sings about being attached to her worst enemy, she’s singing about her self-doubt—which she said is never far away for her.

“It’s like the negative devil on my shoulder who’s just always there and sometimes feels like they’re the person that stops [me] from living a really stress-free life,” she said. “I never wanted to become really successful in the sense of having to tour nonstop, because touring for me can be very strenuous. I’m always so nervous. I wouldn’t say it comes naturally to me; being extroverted and wanting the attention on stage. I’ve always battled the urge to just want to write songs in my bedroom and perhaps give them to someone else.”

Success to Alice Merton means having access to a studio on her schedule, being in charge of how and when her music is released into the world, having to go on tour only when she’s comfortable and staying flexible in her private life.

Both songs are representative of the EP, which is out Friday. She called it the beginning of her “next chapter.”

Some of what’s to come leans more into rock, while some will be poppier, she elaborated.

“I’m not good at staying in my lane,” she said. “It’s never been my strength, nor is it something that I want to do.”

But Merton added that the songs are all coming from the same place of asking big questions of herself. One of new songs—the working title was “The Question” before Merton changed it to “How Well Do You Know Your Feelings?”—takes a closer look at how whether she understands herself enough to make important decisions that will have an impact on her life.

“I think it’s really important in life to define what happiness is for you and what your goals in life should be, rather than other people constantly influencing you on that. That’s where [this song] came about,” she said. “There’s a bunch of questions on these songs coming up.”

“Pick Me Up,” meanwhile, is a song about having friends and family to lean on in trying times, “to be there when you’re not able to feed yourself, when you have lost kind of the lust for life,” Merton said.

She filmed while on a vacation in South Africa, with a friend, where she traveled to a rural farm a couple of hours north of Cape Town. It wasn’t part of her original travel plans, but she said she got the urge to use the country’s incredible scenery as a backdrop. She was amazed by the uniquely formed mountains, which viewers can see in the distance, while wild zebras grazed nearby.

“I do have to admit there’s still a lot of things about South Africa that make me very, very sad. The poverty is incredible there. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Merton said. “There’s a whole different world out there of people who are really suffering.”

That’s contrasted with beauty elsewhere, and those parts she captured in her video.

“It’s a part of me always wanting to see new places and combine that with music,” she said. “So if someone says, ‘Let’s go there,’ I’m like, ‘Cool, can I bring my recording set? Can I bring a camera?'”

Right now, happiness for Merton is settling down a bit. Though she’d spent the pandemic in Germany, she started going back and forth between there and England, where her parents live, and only recently rented an apartment there.

She’s spent much of her time in a recording studio, but at home, she hung up some of her music milestones and art—significant to her—for the first time; something she didn’t give much thought to before. She said she felt like settling down a bit.

And she got a Bernese mountain dog, whom she named Bernie.

“Dogs are great, aren’t they?” she said. “It does mean I can’t leave him alone for too long, so evenings sometimes get cut short. I could get a sitter, but I think I just like being there for him, and honestly, it’s just so much fun having something like a dog in your life because I feel like they brighten your day up. They’re just lovely creatures. They have so much heart. … He’s the biggest goofball I’ve ever met, and it’s so funny watching him.”

Many of Merton’s questions are still unresolved; she’s not claiming to have found the meaning of life. When she gets to a point where she feels like she fully knows herself, she comes to a crossroads where she makes decisions she didn’t expect herself to make, she said.

One of the decisions she actively made was to play smaller venues in the U.S. than she had previously played to gauge whether American audiences were still interested in hearing her music.

“It’s extremely expensive for a European artist such as myself and my band to tour within the U.S.,” Merton said. “For a very long time, we were questioning, does it make sense for us to come back? Are there still people who want to come see us?”

And while she said she’s more comfortable these days performing smaller intimate shows, she wants all of her fans to have the chance to see her. So when her Seattle show sold out, her team moved it to a larger venue.

“I don’t want to be that artist that creates a hype,” she said. “I just want to be consistent for [fans]. I want to be this constant thing in their life where they can count on it. I feel like there’s so many artists nowadays that disappear after five years, and I don’t want to be that.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.