The past year has brought a lot of important firsts for the artist on the rise known as Banks, with Vancouver being ground zero for some great memories.

The Los Angeles–based singer officially made the transition to high-profile live performer in September of last year at Lotusland’s majestic Orpheum, where she opened for the Weeknd.

“It was special—I don’t even know what to say about it,” Banks says, a sense of awe palpable in her voice, when reached by phone in Toronto. “When I played with the Weeknd it was my second show ever. When you talk about Vancouver, that’s all that I think about it because it was such a special night and show for me that I will never, ever forget it, mostly because I had no idea what I was doing.”

When it came time to launch her first-ever headlining tour, Banks again found herself in Vancouver, enchanting a sold-out crowd at Venue this past May. As with her opening slot for the Weeknd, she was well aware that mastering the stage wasn’t going to happen overnight.

“I was nervous at that show, but I’m learning to turn my nerves into something positive,” Banks says. “I mean, they were never cycling to where I couldn’t perform, but now when I get on-stage, they turn into adrenaline, which is good.”

Banks—born Jillian Banks—is part of an ever-growing rank of artists who’ve had to learn stagecraft on the fly. The singer was an Internet sensation long before she had a record deal, with early singles such as “Goddess” and “Beggin for Thread” winning praise for their melding of atmospheric pop, brokenhearted R&B, and lush post-Bristol trip-hop. That explains how she was able to sell out places like Venue a good four months before her debut album, the just-released Goddess, hit the streets.

Even as she got serious about her craft, playing live wasn’t a priority for the singer, who started writing songs in her bedroom a decade ago, at age 15. As a child, Banks was seriously affected by her parents splitting up—she would later, while studying psychology at university, write her thesis on divorce and its impact on kids. When her mother gave her a keyboard in her teens, songwriting became a form of intensely personal therapy.

“Nobody knew that I was a musician or a songwriter or anything—I kept it really private,” Banks reveals. “When I finally started recording I had so much stuff—10 years of development that was sort of gushing out. So I didn’t feel the need to perform live—I just wanted to get my sound together. Everything happens in its own time, and I feel that I’ve been really patient with myself both as a human and an artist. I’ve let myself develop in a way that everything has felt natural when it’s been time to take a new step.”

That said, Goddess has presented Banks with challenges. Much of the album sounds personal, the songs inspired by the kind of dark periods most of us don’t discuss outside of therapy sessions. Consider the line “Please give me something to convince me that I am not a monster” from the gloomy, synth-pulsed opening track, “Alibi”. Or “You make me feel sexy but it’s causing me shame” in the ghostly “Waiting Game”. Such lines are delivered with a vulnerable detachment, the brooding, glitched-out production job adding to the sense that the singer is one of those melancholy types who are only happy when it rains.

As she’s built an audience, Banks has been prodded and probed by fans and interviewers curious about her private life. She’s found herself willing to open up—at one point even posting her home phone number on Facebook—but carefully allows that it’s also been a little strange.

“It’s been a huge dynamic—I’m a very private person,” Banks confesses. “I knew that I was a private person, but I don’t think I knew just how much until this last year and a half, where I’ve really been pushed into being more open. That’s been an incredible thing for me as a person. I started writing for the beasts in my head, so I could get them out, and I could walk a little bit lighter the next day. Now the beasts are being heard by everyone. That’s been incredible and liberating—almost like a journey of acceptance.”

And that journey shows no sign of losing steam as she makes her way across Canada on her latest tour. Vancouver has its work cut out for it if it hopes to give Banks another golden memory.

“ ‘Someone New’ is a song on my album that I had a hard time listening to after I wrote it because it hurt my heart a lot, for a long time,” Banks says. “I performed it for the first time two nights ago. I was really nervous—I’d taken my jacket off at the beginning of the set, but put it back on for that song, almost like a shield. I started crying on-stage. I was so embarrassed, but the crowd just went crazy, filling in and singing all the words that I couldn’t sing. It’s all just been really special.”

Banks headlines the Commodore Ballroom next Wednesday (October 15).