Baby Queen is used to the difficulties that come with recording music at home. “I had to record the vocals for half of my debut EP at home, so I actually cut off one side of a massive cardboard box and put soundproofing on the inside walls to make a vocal booth,” the singer tells Apple Music. “I literally spent most of 2020 with my head inside a box. It’s looking slightly more elegant these days—thank god!” That more sophisticated scene is the setting of this Apple Music Home Session, on which the South Africa-born, London-based singer—real name Bella Latham—offers an arresting cover of Sinéad O’Connor’s unforgettable take on Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and dials back her ultra-candid 2021 indie-pop banger “Raw Thoughts.” That process, she tells us, was enlightening. “I discovered two things,” says the singer, whose startlingly honest alt-pop has made her one of 2021’s most exciting rising talents. “One: that I can’t smoke cigarettes then expect to be able to sing the falsetto notes in the chorus of ‘Raw Thoughts’ in a stripped-down acoustic version of the song. And two: that I should write sad songs, because I think it’s actually where my voice sounds best.” Covering O’Connor’s most famous moment also led Latham to think about her own songwriting. “I became quite obsessed with [this] at the time of my last breakup,” says the singer. “It is the most beautiful song, and it’s so simple. I think that’s something I struggle to find in my own songwriting—genius in simplicity.” Released just as the UK was looking ahead to a way out of lockdown, this intimate Apple Music Home Session is a taste of what we can expect when Baby Queen can perform onstage. Just don’t ask her how that will feel. “I have no idea! I signed my record deal in the first lockdown, so I’ve pretty much only been an artist in the era of COVID,” she admits. “The only two Baby Queen gigs I ever played were in front of my manager and three or four friends, so I think I’m going to be walking out into a slightly different experience. But I think that’s going to be my favorite part of this job: seeing the faces of people the music is reaching and the people who have made me feel like I’m not alone.”