KATIE Von Schleicher is music’s poster girl for internships. Her stint at record label Ba Da Bing saw her being asked to make an album, rather than just the tea, and see what happens.

And what happened was that 2015’s sparse but striking Bleaksploitation outstripped expectations and landed the Maryland singer-songwriter a deal.

Sh**ty Hits contains all the trappings of being recorded in a proper studio rather than a bedroom, with its beefed-up sound and arrangements, and that brings its own pressure, but Von Schleicher is more than capable of making the step-up, with the fresh sheen she can now apply being an effective counterpoint to her swooping-then-tumbling vocals.

While the album’s title might suggest brattishness or flippancy, its contents are anything but: brittle, observant and dark torch songs and chamber pop (Life’s A Lie, Nothing, Sell It Back), crafted through deep-thinking and jittery emotions. Its exploratory nature and lack of a change of pace mean there are no hits on Sh**ty Hits, but to expect that would be to miss the point.