The search for answers—where she’s been, who she’s become, what it all means—lies at the heart of Hiatt’s striking new album, Forever. Written and recorded in Hiatt’s new home just outside Nashville, the collection grapples with growth and change, escape and anxiety, self-loathing and self-love. The songs are intensely vulnerable here, full of diaristic snapshots and deeply personal ruminations, but they’re also broad invitations to find yourself in Hiatt’s unflinching emotional excavations, to see your own humanity reflected back in her pursuit of something larger than herself. Hiatt cut the album with her husband, Coley Hinson, who produced and played most of the instruments on the record, and the result is a raw, unvarnished work of love and trust that walks the line between alt-rock muscle and singer/songwriter sensitivity, a bold, guitar-driven, at times psychedelic exploration of maturity and adulthood from an artist who wants you to know you’re not alone, no matter how lost you may feel.

“I think of this album like a hand to hold,” says Hiatt. “I wanted to open up the door and let people in on what I’ve been going through, but I also hoped that by telling the truth about the joy and pain and love and grief I’ve experienced, it might strike a chord with somebody else navigating their way through all those things, too.”