What happens when, after years of feeding off the darkness, you suddenly start to see the world as a pretty goddamned wonderful place?

That’s a question singer Mish Way finds herself dealing with as 2014 winds down for White Lung. The year has been a memorable one for the Vancouver-spawned quartet, which includes drummer Anne-Marie Vassiliou, guitarist Kenneth William, and recently enlisted bassist Hether Fortune. The band’s unrelenting third full-length, the thinking person’s punk manifesto Deep Fantasy, received across-the-board raves upon its release in June of this year.

There was no shortage of praise for the one-two punch of Vassiliou’s runaway-locomotive drumming and William’s viciously intricate guitar work. But just as celebrated were Way’s lyrics, the songs reading like the work of someone fascinated with gender politics, sexual violence, body-image issues, addictions of various stripes, and other equally heavy concerns. Light, easy-listening stuff Deep Fantasy is not, which makes sense considering the circumstances of its creation.

“I was living in Vancouver, and I was kind of always waiting for the next tour, and really not being healthy to myself,” says the North Van–raised Way, on the phone from her newly adopted home of Los Angeles, just hours after wrapping up a European tour. “It was mostly because I was really unhappy there. It wasn’t my friends or anything—it was more because I felt like I’d accomplished everything that I could, but I also felt like I couldn’t leave. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”

Other forces were also at play, including a messy-sounding split with former White Lung bassist Grady Mackintosh. The long-time member was dismissed toward the end of the touring cycle for the band’s 2012 breakthrough album Sorry. From how Way describes things, William ended up dealing with much of the fallout, the stress colouring his work on Deep Fantasy.

“His guitar playing on the record is super-anxious and paranoid,” she offers. “It’s ill in a sick way, not like ill in a kind of like ‘That’s dope’ way. I mean actually physically ill, because he was really sick when he was writing those songs, stuck in a jam space and toiling away. All of his parts have so much anxiety on them.”

So what’s changed over the course of this year? Well, in some ways, everything. With Fortune easing seamlessly into White Lung, 2014 has been about as drama-free as things can be for a band that’s on the road more than it’s at home. The accolades heaped on Deep Fantasy cemented the band as a genuine DIY hot-list attraction, as reflected in tours that included swings through Japan, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Where hitting the road in the early days of White Lung was a money-losing grind, Way is happy to report that when she returns home these days, she actually has enough money to pay rent and eat. Her profile with the band has also opened major doors in her other job as a freelance writer, her bylines appearing everywhere from Pitchfork to Vice to the boutique artists-interviewing-artists publication The Talkhouse.

As if all that isn’t enough to have the singer feeling great about where she’s at today, developments in her personal life include a just-announced engagement. In January, Way will marry bassist Austin Barber of the L.A. hardcore band Obliterations, and the service will be presided over by a mutual friend familiar to Vancouverites: Stephen McBean of Black Mountain. And there’s also the fact that Way couldn’t be more in love with L.A.

Basically, everything is coming up aces right now. And that’s what, on some level, has Way worried about the future. Given the momentum White Lung built with brutal agit-punk outings Sorry and Deep Fantasy, the next record will be the most important of the band’s career. The problem will be figuring out how to deal with all the positive changes.

“I’m a little worried because my content has always been from anger and frustration, and not feeling happy with the world around me,” Way says simply. “Now that I do feel happy, I really wonder what will come out of it.”

There are good reasons for why Mish Way tends to do most of the talking for White Lung. For starters, Vassiliou and William are happier not having to.

“Anne-Marie hates doing interviews—it’s her nightmare,” Way offers. “Kenny is indifferent, which is too bad ’cuz he can be hilarious and on-point when he wants to.”

That Way is White Lung’s main mouthpiece suits her fine. She was one of those kids who start talking only to discover they can’t shut up.

“I was really outspoken when I was little—I was kind of a blabbermouth,” Way reveals. “I always remember being in elementary school and how my desk had to be far away from everyone else’s so I couldn’t talk. In high school in writing class, even though I loved that class, I still got punished and had to sit by myself because I couldn’t not talk.”

Way is the oldest of four children—her siblings include a brother who’s a lawyer and a sister who’s a teacher. Her parents met when they were young and are still together, something that both amazes and inspires her.

“They set a super-high standard for relationships—they are really in love,” she reports. “It’s really nice. Not a lot of people stay together now, but that’s always been my example. I have a lot of faith in that kind of stuff—relationships mean a lot to me.”

Growing up, Way consistently did well in school, which probably earned her some slack with her parents.

“I wasn’t exactly good at following rules,” she admits. “I was always in trouble once I started pushing it a little. But I always got good grades—that was the thing. I would get in trouble for stuff like not telling my parents where I was, not coming home and my mother madly trying to find me at 3 a.m. But because I got good grades, they could never really dog me that hard.”

Way remembers being friendly with everyone in high school in North Van, including the cool kids, but never totally feeling like she belonged. By the time she got to Grade 12, her life would change.

“I met this girl named Josie, and she was, like, the only feminist punk girl in our high school. She was awesome—she played in bands and stuff. One of the first times I went to see music was her band at [now-closed Vancouver all-ages club] Mesa Luna. So she kind of showed me good music, and once that happened I was like, ‘Okay, here we go!’

“I was already playing guitar and stuff,” she continues. “But her and this other guy in my school named Matt, who was kind of this punk kid, kind of helped me figure it out, otherwise I never would have been introduced to any of that stuff. You need someone to kind of show you the way—like ‘Come over here, there’s all this cool stuff happening.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah—I wanna do this.’ ”

Way would play in go-nowhere bands while attending university, eventually graduating with a degree in gender studies and communications.

“I was doing creative writing and then took a feminist philosophy class, and that was the most exciting class I’d ever been in in my life,” she says. “I couldn’t wait to go back. I was excited to do my homework and wanted to read as much as I could. That’s when I switched my degree and decided I would get a degree in gender studies—just because I loved it so much. Nothing excited me the same way.”

Except for music.

“At one point I was like, ‘I’m going to see this through, all the way up to a PhD level and teach,’ ” Way says. “Most of the girls that I was in the program with were kind of working towards that. But when I was in university, I started White Lung, we started touring, and that kind of took off.”

Along with cofounder Vassiliou, Way knew that she was serious about White Lung right from the start.

“White Lung was my first band that was mine completely,” Way states. “I met Anne-Marie and we really wanted to start a band together. It was kind of our thing. It was my first real endeavour.”

That was back in 2006, with the lineup initially all-female and nowhere near as ambitious as White Lung would become.

“We were probably around for three or four years, we only played locally and I think went down to Portland once to play,” Way remembers. “We only put out two 7-inches. To me, to be a real band, you have to go down to the States and tour.”

Things would change when William took over on guitar.

“Once Kenny joined, we really got down to work,” Way states. “Before, Anne-Marie and I really wanted to get going, but there was so much fighting within the group that we were all just not on the same page. It took a long time, but when Kenny joined in 2009 it was like, ‘Okay—this is the group. Let’s go.’ He was really good at propelling the songwriting. And it all became more real as we started to push ourselves to tour.”

Sorry from 2012 would establish White Lung as a band that wasn’t satisfied being hometown heroes. Fuelled by galloping ragers like “Take the Mirror” and “Glue”, the album caught the attention of critics across the continent, including at Rolling Stone, which quite correctly named it one of the 10 best releases of the year.

White Lung’s growing profile would, however, begin to exact a toll on Way, laying the foundation for chunks of Deep Fantasy. Increasingly she found herself feeling boxed in by Vancouver, where she had lived for most of her life, coping by medicating herself with drugs and alcohol. That feeling of being trapped would surface in songs such as “Drown With the Monster”, a dark-hearted and claustrophobic pile driver shot through with lines like “And I am gutted/Down to the floor/I rode the monster/He wanted more.”

But far from being monochromatic, Deep Fantasy has a dark side and a light side, the latter half of that equation represented by “In Your Home”, an uncharacteristically nuanced post-shoegazer marked by some of William’s most deliciously textured guitar work. Those who prefer their punk cancerous and confrontational, meanwhile, can head right to blunt assaults like “Down It Goes” and “I Believe You”.

Way explains the two halves of Deep Fantasy by noting that she was in a shitty place during the initial part of the writing process, and then a considerably better one—namely L.A.—for the last half of the album’s creation.

“I made a conscious decision,” Way says, “where it was like, ‘I’m here, this is not good, my friends are worried about me, I’m not treating myself well, and for what? Because I’m bored? Because I’m sad?’ So I changed it. I was like, ‘This is ridiculous—I’m not living in Siberia addicted to krokodil heroin or whatever.’ I was basically feeling sorry for myself—that’s what it was. So I went, ‘Grow up—get out of here, get real. You’re a capable person—go do something else.’

“I was not happy,” she continues, “and the funny thing is that half the record was written with that mindset. Then I moved here and had a month and a bit when my fiancé and I—we’d had a thing for a year—started to actually be together and fall in love. So a lot of the songs that I was finishing lyrics for here were a little more hopeful. They had a different tone. So I think the record has a lot of anger on it, but there’s also a lot of positivity.”

Moving forward, Way sees the myriad changes in her life having an impact on what White Lung does next. Looking back on 2014, she has no complaints.

“All this stuff started to happen because the record was getting reviewed and getting all kinds of press,” she marvels. “We got to go to Japan, and that was such a highlight for me. Australia was great and New Zealand too, but when we played Fuji Rock in Japan that was so, so great. I’ve always wanted to go there and play.”

The bucket-list, worth-remembering-on-your-deathbed experiences didn’t stop there.

“I never thought that I’d get to go to Russia, but we played there and they were, like, the best shows—so packed, and the kids were so insane. We were crowd-surfing every night. In St. Petersburg we blew the power, and I was standing on the stage going, ‘What do I do?’ All the kids were like, ‘Welcome to Russia! This is what happens!’ Everyone was drinking, so we just did some more shots of wodka with them until the power came back on and we somehow finished the set. They get so excited there about music.”

It’s experiences like those that have Way similarly excited about the future of White Lung.

“Next year, we’re committing the whole year to working on the next record,” she says about a Deep Fantasy follow-up. “We want to take our time and make it a real masterpiece.”

The challenge? Accepting the fact that, for now, the darkness and rage that has powered White Lung in the past is harder to find. Not that Way is complaining.

“There were years of torture and hell, and self-inflicted too,” she says with a laugh. “It’s so funny—I was looking in my passport and going, ‘Jesus Christ—I’ve been everywhere this year.’ I’m so grateful. It’s just amazing. I mean, I just got back from tour a few hours ago, so my feet are all messed up, and my skin’s really bad and I feel like I’m dying and I missed my fiancé every day. But then you get home and you go, ‘You know what? Don’t complain, because you get to do the thing that you love most. You get to make money from it, and that gets to be your career.’ Things are falling into place and being really nice to me, so I have to be respectful of that, keep working hard, and just appreciate it.”

White Lung plays Electric Owl on December 5.