Q&A: Singer Kelsea Little discusses songwriting process, upcoming L.A. concert

Indie folk-pop artist Kelsea Little has been playing the harp since she was 8 years old and experiments with piano, flute and guitar. Little will be performing at The Smell on Friday as part of her Pacific Coast Highway tour. Little spoke with Daily Bruin’s Jessica McQueen about her first solo tour, inspiration for her music and her dreams of playing at Coachella.

Daily Bruin: How is your Pacific Coast Highway tour going so far?
Kelsea Little: It’s going really well. … This is my first tour as a solo artist. I toured up the coast once before with my old band. It was only 10 days, but it felt like a month. We just felt like rock stars and I loved it. “¦ I also take solo road trips sometimes, and that’s where I do a lot of writing. I took one up (Pacific Coast Highway) and it was life changing. I idealize a lot of things, but that helps the songwriting. It feels instantly more magical this way.

DB: “Personal Myth” is your first professionally recorded LP. How would you say your sound has changed since you self-produced your first album “Art Vs. Craft”?
KL: It really hasn’t changed much. I always write about things that I know or personally experience. What’s probably changed about my sound is the music itself. When I was in my old band, the Wrong Trousers, Joseph, who played mandolin, wrote the music. He always had chord structures in his head, and I always had lyrics in my head. I never really had to deal with the music. It took me a little while to get the hang of writing melodies and chord structures, but my songs now match who I am as both a musician and a songwriter.

DB: What is your songwriting process like?
KL: I’m not the kind of person who can start with an idea for a song and work on it for a long period of time before it’s finished. I write things that I personally experience because I like writing truthfully. When I finish processing something that has happened to me, lyrics will come to me. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but it’s like I see the lyrics in brackets. I see the beginning and the end, and I just need to get to a piece of paper as fast as I can. They just spill out. It’s a very natural process, so it feels like that’s what I should be doing.

DB: Are there any artists that inspire you?
KL: The artist that changed my life was Joanna Newsom. I’ve been playing harp since I was 8 years old, so I had already been playing harp by the time I heard her for the first time. I was just floored … because I’ve never heard anyone do songwriting with harp before. It literally changed my life because I was supposed to study to be an orchestral harpist, but I realized that I wanted to do songwriting. It combined music, which I’d done my whole life, and writing, which I felt natural at, and Newsom made me understand that you could do that with the harp.

DB: What are some of your musical goals for the future?
KL: I have a couple of far-fetched ones. I feel like if you’re too focused on making it, then you won’t. You’ll be disappointed by not reaching these huge goals. But in my idealistic head, I would love to play Coachella someday, even if it was at noon on Friday. I always joke that I would like to be a musical guest on “SNL.” … All that said, if I don’t accomplish any of that, I won’t feel like a failure. I’m 22, and I feel that I’ve already done a lot for my age. You can’t be too hard on yourself.