Kylee Phillips doesn’t need to give herself daily pep talks anymore.

After some deep introspection, the Ypsilanti, Michigan singer-songwriter/keyboardist gained a fresh perspective and wanted to share “the good parts” of her journey on a new EP.

“I feel like the pep talks worked,” said Phillips about The Good Parts, her sophomore release. “It’s encouraging because it’s hard to see yourself grow when it’s happening, and it’s not until you look back that you say, ‘Oh, I made it to the other side.’”

Coming out the other side, Phillips offers heartfelt tales of resilience and acceptance across four honest tracks on her indie-folk-pop EP.

“The songs are about saying, ‘Maybe I need to try a different path,’ but they’re also saying, ‘These are the things I’ve noticed about myself that are not going to change—that I’m not letting go of,’” she said.

“It’s this funny combination of ‘I’m going to have to make some different choices, but I also know better who I actually am now.’”

That authenticity quickly resonates with listeners on The Good Parts, which features reflective lyrics and lush instrumentation.

“I had a friend reach out to me and say, ‘I feel like you wrote this song for me.’ And I said, ‘I wrote it for myself, and now I feel like you need it more than I do,’” she said. “I always write the stuff that I need to hear, but when it’s also what other people need to hear, it feels special.”

The Song Parts

The EP and its introspective themes also serve as a sequel to Phillips’ debut EP Long Time Coming.

“Those songs on Long Time Coming were written in the thick of it,” she said. “These songs were written not long after that, but now, it’s been a couple of years since they were written.”

One of the songs to emerge from that writing session is “Head Down / Eyes Up,” a bold anthem about finding the inner strength to move forward.

Alongside hopeful synth and drums, Phillips sings, “I’ve been trying to learn to lift my eyes up / Even when I don’t like what I find / I’ve been trying to keep myself from giving up / While I still have some time to decide.”

“A lot of it is about learning to be present and to accept that we only live in the present,” she said. “It’s also about how I can’t change the past and I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but I’m trying to learn to be present and honest with myself.”

To bring the track to life visually, Phillips worked with Exterior Night’s Mathew Pimental and Jona Kalaj on the ethereal video. Filmed on Detroit’s Belle Isle, it features Phillips talking into a payphone and sitting in front of a pond with a red light shining on her.

“I like the juxtaposition of this natural ethereal thing, but also the harshness of the red light,” she said. “They have such a good knack for creating meaning, and I like to give them a song and say, ‘You interpret this however you see it.’”

Next, Phillips remembers the positive aspects of a past relationship on the title track. Immersed in grateful electric guitar and synth, she sings, “Hold them in your hearts, the good parts / Keep the good parts / I’m sure you’d like to pick and choose, just don’t lose / The good parts / Keep the good parts.”

“I was thinking about when a situation or a relationship ends, the parties involved can walk away with entirely different interpretations of what happened and that’s very unsettling to me. I want to say, ‘Can we come to some sort of consensus about this situation?’” said Phillips, who recently released a vulnerable video for the title track.

“But the reality is that you have to hold onto your feelings and let them hold onto theirs. This song is me saying, ‘If I have any say in what you walk away with, I hope you’ll walk away with the good parts … but I have no control over whether or not you do.”

After identifying “The Good Parts” of the past, Phillips makes incremental changes for the present and future on “31.”

Backed by courageous bass and drums, she sings, “Take a look ahead / You may be trembling but you take a step and take a step again / Everything you have / Started with inches that became the miles you had to go instead.”

“I did write it on my 31st birthday. I wasn’t originally going to call it that, and I kept trying to pull different lyrics from the song to make the title and none of them felt right,” Phillips said.

“When I took a step back, I felt like it was about that age and how I felt looking backward and forward. And now I’m happy with the title—it feels right.”

Finally, Phillips embraces her holistic self and the person she’s become on “Beautiful Still.”

Comforted by serene electric guitar and synth, she sings, “And oh, maybe one day I’ll run / With a crack I’ll take off like a bullet shot from a gun / Or maybe I’ll stay where I stand, let the land take me back like a house abandoned / But beautiful still / Beautiful still, beautiful still.”

“Despite being a performer, I’m a very introverted person and I’m an internal processor. There are all these parts of me—I considered them flaws for a long time—especially the introversion or the social awkwardness,” Phillips said.

“At a certain point, I came to terms with the fact that they’re a part of who I am, and to a certain extent, I enjoy that they’re a part of who I am. It’s this idea of shifting from tolerating yourself to liking these things about yourself.”

The Recording and Performing Parts

Once Phillips had the tracks written for The Good Parts, she traveled to The Vanguard Room in Lakeland, Florida with singer-songwriter/guitarist Chris DuPont to record them with producer Evan Eliason. She had previously worked with Eliason on Long Time Coming.

“We tracked them all in February … and I think production-wise I had less of a vision for these songs. With Long Time Coming, we had more of an idea of what we wanted the overall sound to be,” said Phillips, who also collaborates with partner DuPont in DuPont Phillips.

“And with these songs, we brought them to Evan and said, ‘We’re not sure what these songs are supposed to be.’ We relied on him a little bit more for the jumping-off point production-wise and his level of creativity blows my mind.”

Along with producing, Eliason added keys and synth to the tracks on The Good Parts. Meanwhile, DuPont played guitar and bass on all four songs and Ricky Johnson played drums on three tracks.

“Fortunately, I have a talented guitar player around because I bring him these piano songs and say, ‘Make it not a piano song,’” said Phillips about working with DuPont.

“With ‘The Good Parts’ and ‘Beautiful Still,’ we featured the guitar as the backbone of those songs. And Evan and Chris did some interesting things where they would break the guitar part up into a few different tracks and layer them on top of each other.”

To celebrate the release of The Good Parts, Phillips is performing three live shows this fall, including an October 24 opening set for Sixpence None The Richer at The Ark in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“It’s going to be a duo with Chris and me. With a support set, I have to keep it tight, but I’m hoping to get a new one or two thrown in there because I’ve been writing a ton,” she said.

“And then whenever I have Chris with me, it always feels like a waste not to do at least a duet, so we’ll probably do one of our duo songs.”

Phillips is also playing November 14 at Lake Orion’s 20 Front Street as part of a songwriter round with Geneviève Racette and Abbie Thomas and headlining a December 17 show at Alpino in Detroit.

After those live shows, Phillips will focus on new music—both solo and with DuPont Phillips.

“For the next year, I have this pile of songs I’m sitting on and excited about. I’m trying to plan the next year so I can hopefully afford to do an LP. I’m hoping to play more and be able to prepare for that,” she said.

“I’m trying to get into some new rooms because I have lived in a lot of the folk rooms and listening rooms. But a lot of what I make is big pop music and it’s a scene I’m not super connected to right now, so I’m trying to dip my toe in that arena.”

Kylee Phillips performs October 24 at The Ark with Sixpence None The Richer. Tickets are available via The Ark’s website.