If Casey Dienel has learned anything during her existence on Earth, it’s that sometimes you need to trust the voices within.

Take, for example, her decision to leave Portland a couple of years ago. The artist who performs as White Hinterland came to the conclusion that she desperately needed a change after a half-decade in the Rose City.

“I definitely didn’t want to leave when I left,” Dienel says, on the line from, coincidentally enough, Portland, where she’s visiting friends. “Things in my life had sort of taken a turn where I sort of had to. It was clear that I need to do some readjusting.”

Part of that can be attributed to depression, which the singer has been open about battling. On that front, she notes that moving back to Scituate, Massachusetts, to be with her parents was a smart and timely decision. It also seemed to help her shift into a better place as an artist.

Before making the move, Dienel made numerous attempts to record Baby, White Hinterland’s rich, rewarding, and highly textured fourth album. After working with producers, she eventually realized there was only one person she needed to be listening to: herself.

“What I had to come to terms with was embracing the way that I work,” Dienel says. “I would go into these professional studios and just try to bang out my record. It became clear that’s not what the work was interested in from me. I’m in no way the god of my work. I’m more like a receptor, so I have to kind of adjust around what the songs are telling me to do.”

Dienel orchestrated things herself as the record’s producer, spending five months building her own studio and then endless hours mastering the technology that would help her create Baby. The multitalented musician has, in the past, questioned why producing has been a job where few women have made inroads. Baby is therefore a bold artistic statement in more ways than one; to get a sense of just how impressive Dienel’s skills behind the scenes are, cue up the title track, which starts out in old-timey Sacred Harp territory and then mixes swooping R&B vocal hooks, glitch-heavy percussion, and mondo-distorted organ for a captivating five minutes.

“I really wanted my own space and a place to experiment with recording,” she notes. “I wanted to especially explore production because I was so interested in it. We lionize the Rick Rubins—he’s a genius—and the Timbalands and the Quincy Joneses of the world for good reason, but Sylvia Robinson and Susan Rogers are people that no one really talks about. If I had seen that starting out, I think that I would probably have come to it [producing] sooner. It’s the same in a lot of fields—in film there is a lack of female directors. It becomes ‘Who is your role model?’ ”

On the subject of role models, with Baby Dienel joins a list that includes the groundbreaking likes of Björk, Fiona Apple, and Cat Power. The record is fascinating partly because of the way that it explores darkness but never sounds depressing. So while “David” has her singing “I see beauty in your eyes/But all around me corruption, cruelty, and senselessness,” that’s sweetened by stark piano and soaring-angels backing vocals.

Listening to the voices inside doesn’t mean that you have to be controlled by them.

“I think that juxtaposition is really crucial in all the best works of art,” Dienel argues. “Definitely, anything that I’ve loved has different textures and moods that might seem difficult, but that also have a levity. A lot of people who haven’t struggled with depression don’t understand that while it’s awful, that is where a lot of humour comes from. So no matter how tough life can be, I don’t want the experience of my music to be tough for people. At the end of the day I have to do what I love and think is cool, and then just pray and hope they take something away from that.”

White Hinterland plays the Media Club on Monday (October 13).