A few years ago, Jillian Rose Banks, known mononymously by her last name, stopped coloring her hair. She had painted it a frayed black half a decade previously for the music video for her song "Brain," a haunting realization of being the pawn in a lover's game of chess, and the hairstyle just stuck. Eventually, the singer's appearance as a whole dimmed to match her material—dark R&B crooned by chords of electronica and soulful whispers of lyrics.

But by the time she had completed her tour for The Altar, the artist's second studio album, she had a hit a wall. "I just needed a break," Banks tells CR. "I wasn't feeling well mentally nor physically, and I needed to re-calibrate. While I was doing that I stopped dying my hair, and—it sounds silly because it’s just hair—but something about having my hair back to its natural color felt really good. Like really good, not just a hair color good, but, like, a good breath of relief."


Although Banks began writing songs and teaching herself piano at the age of 15, her music career didn't formally start until college after meeting DJ Yung Skeeter while studying psychology at the University of Southern California. The two collaborated on "Before I Ever Met You," a private SoundCloud track that ended up on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show. Her first two EPs earned her critic applause and a spot opening for The Weeknd for his 2013 fall tour. By her debut album, Goddess, which released September of 2014, she had played Coachella, broken through top 20 charts around the world, and essentially galvanized a new genre of music—fusing R&B, synth, and electronica into melancholic pop music. It was a enigmatically monotheistic style that others like Tinashe, FKA Twigs, and Billie Eilish would come to own.

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But after a sophomore album, The Altar, and two world tours, Banks was tired. The artist hadn't taken a creative break since her career took off, and needed what she describes as "time to remember who I was." She moved back to LA, quit dying her hair (returning it to her natural walnut brown), and started focusing on what makes her happy. It took two years.

But the truth is, the music didn't stop, and, in fact, creating it has never been the challenge. "Living is my challenge," she says with a laugh. "Being a human is painful and confusing sometimes, and confronting certain demons is hard. I am the most fluent in music—more than in English. Nothing about writing music has ever been a challenge, in fact, it's something I have to do to function." Her new album, III, which released earlier this month, is a culmination of these confrontations with the resolution to put certain things to bed. While the work marks her third studio release, its title specifically is about the decisive action to end one chapter of life and start another. Or, as Banks says, "to be able to confidently put a period on a frame of time and let it go; to be at peace with it, and then start something new. "


As an album, III does just that, stretching from Banks' associated brooding rhythm and blues into straight up trap-pop. With "Gimme," the funky electronic pop lead single, we hear the artist more auto-tuned than ever, as she begs "Gimme, gimme, what I want, what I deserve / Gimme, gimme it." Rather than crass or in the vein of Britney Spears, it's a reclamation of the self and a new sexual expression for the 31-year-old songstress, who says the song "taps into a certain part of me that is just like an animal."


Elsewhere, on "The Fall," a rock pop piece that the artist has been developing for nearly three years, she dives into uncharted territory: rap. Co-written with Miguel, the song is a veiled critique of the music industry, and its bridge features Banks rap-singing "Still trippin' to slip in your own dirty fingers to dip in the chicken now / And you knew that my peaches is ripe for the pickin' and you tried to pull it down." The words come from a poem she had written during her musical hiatus, and, in fact, are part of a larger body of work the artist is releasing this September as Generations of Women from the Moon, her first book.

In spite of the new sound and new batch of collaborators—including Bon Iver-producer BJ Burton, who worked on 10 of its 13 tracks, and Francis Farewell Starlite, who is featured on "Look What You're Doing to me"—III boasts Banks' unmistakably deft power to sedate the darkness with body-rocking music. So much so that the effect is almost mystical.

"When I make music I don't even know where it comes from," she explains. "I feel like I am a vessel for ideas to flow through. It’s almost like I go on autopilot and tap into a weird part of my mind. These melodies and lyrics come out. It's not like it’s a conscious thing—it's just me and my emotions."