Seattle resident Jesy Fortino is the sole member of Tiny Vipers. Her music is slow and meditative like a hypnotic sedative. This makes her pseudonym a fitting one, referencing snakes that inject venom to immobilise their victims.

Her second album Life On Earth has just been released on Sub Pop and it sees Fortino moving away from the more layered sound of her first record which, in hindsight, she has some regrets about. “When I listen to Hand Across The Void I hear those voiceovers and all the extra stuff and I hate it you know? I don’t like it anymore and I wish I didn’t do it,” she says. “This one I was like just don’t do anything that might date the record. Write the songs, record them and even though it might not sound like other music that’s around right now, I’m always going to like it because its not limited to what’s going on right now.”

The reason for Fortino’s subtle shift in style is for the most part down to the experience she has gained from releasing and touring her music. Her natural style has evolved to a new and more satisfying place and she seems content with its minimal form. “The first record I was just learning how to write songs and I was really latching onto the things I heard around me. I feel like over time I’ve moved away from that and developed my own personal style from the one I used to play when I was younger.”

Fortino’s music inhabits a dark and still place and she explains that much of that is derived from her environment. “After the last record I went through a lot of changes in my mind about what music was and what I was doing it for. I spent a lot of time alone, in my mind, talking long, long walks. I’d come home from a long walk and just start playing guitar, record it and slowly but surely songs would emerge from that.”

That isolation and singularity meant that she was determined to keep the recorded versions on Life On Earth as true to the original songs as possible. “I feel like the songs came from such a natural organic place that I wanted the record to sound just as natural. They were written in a simplistic way so that you just follow the melody. I feel like the melody is really preserved and pure and I didn’t want to bring in any extra elements, I didn’t want to flush anything out too much,” explains Fortino.

Listening to Life On Earth can be an arduous experience for some people. It is an album that requires patience and attention before the weaving melodies and deceptively simple guitar playing seeps in. Though the mood may be dark and sparse, Fortino feels her music is essentially optimistic, though she concedes that many people may not hear that straight away.

“Some people might think it sounds dreary, some people might think it sounds hopeful. To me a lot of these songs are about hope in the face of utter despair, to me they are really positive but that’s just me. When I play them it makes me feel good and when I write them there is good feeling toward humanity and hope that someone hears it and feels hope,” she says, before adding, “There is no negativity, I don’t want anyone to feel bad.”

Conflicts of the soul and personal trials and tribulations form a large part of the subject matter of Tiny Vipers’ songs and Fortino readily admits that “The things that always move me are kind of dark. I think things that are beautiful are often to do with tragedy, but not in a gothic way. The most moved I am with stories or any art that I see from other people has to do with going through some kind of tragedy and how they approach it and recover. There is something in that interaction between deciding whether to go on and I think that is where the story is the most beautiful, a lot of beauty comes from those moments. It’s kind of dark but it’s not to me,” she says candidly.

Taking her songs on the road around America and Europe has has opened Fortino’s eyes to a lot of new things and that has influenced her worldview and subsequently her creativity. “Learning more about the world complicates things for me and causes all kinds of contradictions inside me. You learn a lot about the world and it definitely inspires me. It opens new doors about new things that I didn’t even know existed.”

For now she will continue to tour and promote Life On Earth through the rest of the year, including a trip to Australia. After that she intends to work on a video installation project with her boyfriend, an interesting prospect considering the strong and cohesive vision she has with her music. That courage to stay true to her creativity is what makes Tiny Vipers stand out in an increasingly crowded musical world.