Sometimes casual comments cut so deep they leave wounds that take years to heal. Los Angeles–based singer and solo artist Genevieve can definitely testify to that.

Pay attention to her lyrics on Show Your Colors, her debut EP from last year, and it becomes obvious there are some heavy things going on beneath the electro-sheened surface. (Samples include “Deep inside there’s a power you can’t resist/And it’s your right to define who you wanna be” and “I used to be my father’s daughter/Everything I did was for attention.”)

To understand where the fledgling solo artist is coming from, it helps to flash back to her childhood. When asked to do so, Genevieve takes a deep breath and opens right up.

“It was a roller-coaster ride of a childhood for sure,” the singer says, on the line from the City of Angels. “It was filled with a lot of pain and confusion and darkness. It was a big, broken family that was pretty messy, but at the same time I’m grateful for it because I grew up really fast and had to get to know myself early on in life. And that helped me steer clear of a bunch of bullshit, if you don’t mind my French.”

Being able to cope better than most didn’t, however, make her forget various indignities.

“Really early, someone close to me in my family said to me, ‘The last thing that the world needs is another artist,’ ” Genevieve relates. “That was just totally invalidating. I don’t even think that I was 12 years old when I heard that. That’s where lyrics like ‘Dreaming dreams that I would never tell’ came from. It was sort of like ‘Oh, you wanna be a singer who writes her own songs and shares them with people? And still pays her bills and potentially has a family? Well, that’s quite a pipe dream, Gen.’

“Even to this day,” she continues, “our culture really does celebrate artists and personalities, but at the same time there’s a scary amount of shame in going ‘I wanna be an artist.’ ”

Nonetheless, Genevieve is committed to the artist’s life. She first surfaced as the frontwoman of Chicago indie-rock troupe Company of Thieves, which had a seven-year run.

Splitting from that band was easy because she found herself creatively unfulfilled. But it was also daunting, partly because she decided to pack up and relocate to Los Angeles. The reward for taking a leap was out-of-the-gate recognition from taste-making outlets like Noisey. And with the attention has come the realization that people are now paying attention to what she has to say. Which is fine, because now, as she’s getting ready to record her debut full-length, she’s learning that she’s got lots to say.

“It can be a great exercise in humility,” she says of her writing process, “and also in learning to laugh about difficult times in my life. Basically, a little bit of forgiveness and a little bit of laughter gets me through most everything. And so I think the album will be a mix of the personal and also the really playful. And confrontational. I need to do that right now in my life because for some reason I have it in me. If I don’t get it out, it stays inside and I internalize everything. And if that happens I might implode.”

Genevieve plays the Rio next Thursday (March 24).