Not that she can remember large swaths of it, but Låpsley’s first Coachella experience was pretty grand, the English singer’s terror of performing live counterbalanced by the joy of soaking things up as a fan. When the 19-year-old star in waiting calls the Georgia Straight, she’s trying to piece the weekend together, including a live reception she never dreamed of, and craziness that started with a bottle of gin and a bottomless cup.

“I didn’t drink as much last night, so I feel—not refreshed, but definitely better today than the other days,” the woman born Holly Lapsley Fletcher says with a laugh, on the line from Los Angeles the day after Coachella. “That first night, I was pouring gin into my glass—like, quadruple shots. Disgusting.”

Having one’s name on the marquee at Coachella obviously has its advantages, including the gin finding its way into her dressing-room area. The singer has enjoyed volumes of British street-level buzz over the past couple of years, that getting her invited to the most celebrated of American megafestivals even before she’d released a full-length. She arrived at Coachella to discover that more than a few people have picked up her excellent debut album, Long Way Home, since its official release last month.

“The show went well, and there were people there that knew the music,” Låpsley notes. “I was so surprised that people were so welcoming. To go on-stage was so scary—I didn’t realize that so many people would be there. And then suddenly there were all these people singing along, which was amazing.”

The teen, who was raised in a town near Liverpool, proves to be an interesting contradiction as an interview subject, at once both serious and thoughtful but also prone to spontaneous laughter. For example, she cheekily notes that Coachella seems shamefully overrun by kids who are there only because their parents ponied up a large amount of money for the tickets, but then adds she was happy to wander the site and take in as much as possible. “Obviously, I’m showing my age here, but every time I get to a festival it’s like a free ticket, and I really want to just ride the wave,” she says. “Like so many people my age, I just want to experience all these festivals that I can because I am a punter as well as a performer. I love to go out and watch other people play. I probably enjoy that even more than performing.”

Consider that a sign that the singer seems egoless, which is refreshing, considering many project her to be the biggest thing since Adele, with whom she shares a record label (XL Recordings). Despite comparisons to one of modern pop’s greatest success stories, she has more in common with the understated likes of the xx on Long Way Home, which is all about microchip-generated atmospherics.

Working with XL’s in-house producer, Rodaidh McDonald, Låpsley fashioned a deeply personal chillout album loaded with beautiful flourishes. “Tell Me the Truth” is built around regal synth swells and manipulated vocals, while “Cliff” melds baroque church organs with percussion seemingly inspired by the sounds of the Amazon rainforest.

Låpsley lets her inner soul sister run wild on quiet 3 a.m. standouts like “Hurt Me”, but she’s also not shy about showcasing her inner experimentalist. Consider “Station”, where telltale heartbeats, chopped-and-screwed vocals, and a muted synth line turn weird into sublimely wonderful.

Låpsley was raised on classical music and classic postpunk acts like the Smiths and Joy Division. (Her early Monday EP contains an acoustic glitch-pop reworking of New Order’s “Blue Monday”.) She spent her early teens mesmerized by rave culture, that leading her to create bedroom songs on GarageBand, going hard with block-rocking beats, then dialling things back. Impressively, Låpsley originally relied on no one but herself, putting her songs up on Soundcloud, then catching the attention of BBC tastemakers.

“With any software, you can’t just go on it and expect to instantly be a pro,” she argues. “It took me a while, but if I couldn’t figure something out I’d just YouTube it. I probably started writing songs to get away from doing revisions with my schoolwork—instead of clicking on a Word document I’d click on GarageBand and tinker around.”

Get past the technology, and Long Way Home is a very human breakup record. Låpsley is upfront about how songs were inspired by the implosion of a difficult relationship; do some Internet sleuthing, and you’ll discover that her ex had debilitating OCD. Låpsley isn’t afraid to let listeners inside with lyrics like “These are the times I suffer the most/Night stretches to beyond the darkness” (“Heartless”) and “I’m counting down the seconds that we have/I can see the end is in sight at last” (“Hurt Me”).

The vulnerability she’s shown on Long Way Home has clearly helped the singer connect with fans.

“Everything has gone the way we’ve wanted it to in terms of exposure across the world,” she says. “At the same time, you have to accept the fact that more people are listening to you, and you’re going to get asked questions that are really personal. If I was to ask you personal questions about some relationship that you’d had, everyone would be really taken aback. In some way, people think that artists are different from other humans, but we’re definitely not.

“But shit’s still real, and you have to deal with it in a way,” Låpsley goes on. “So the more interviews you do, and the more shows you do, it gets easier. You learn to almost remove yourself from it, in a way, or you’ll constantly be sitting in that past place, and never ever move on. You have to be professional.”

Unless you’re at Coachella, at which point there’s no shame in ripping it up. “I always seem to have a good rider despite being only 19,” she says with a laugh. “I seem to be lucky that way.”

Låpsley plays Fortune Sound Club on Tuesday (April 26).