The single Lights Go Out is about a very specific moment in a relationship, can you tell me a little bit more about what inspired the track?

NUSSY: “It was brought on by probably the biggest fight I’ve ever had with my boyfriend. You know when you’re in a relationship and you know that there’s this really important piece of information that you need to tell the person that you’re with but you are so incredibly terrified to do that. This brings on all those feelings of anxiety and so much stress because you don’t really know how they are going to react to the situation. The lyric ‘Lights go out’ is my fear of him turning his back on me, I guess.”

Was producing this single a cathartic experience for you?

“Absolutely. A producer once said to me ‘you have to write what you know’. That stuck with me. It’s meant that a lot of my music comes from personal experience or the experience of people I’m close with. Writing this track was almost like a bit of therapy for me – it got all those feelings out.”

Where did your love for music begin?

“I started playing piano when I was four-years-old. I was really young and my dad plays guitar and mum loves music so there was always music playing in my house as a kid. I didn’t begin singing until I was about 16 or 17-years-old. I love performing and I love writing music.”

You’ve been compared to really big artists like Robyn. How would you describe your sound?

“It’s electronic pop at its base. Being compared to someone like Robyn is amazing, she’s a massive hero of mine. Her career has spanned so many decades, she’s in her forties and is still pumping out absolute killer tracks. I do draw a lot of influence from artists like her.”

Which artists do you listen to?

“I’ve been really into Halsey. I think for a long-time pop music wasn’t cool.

“It’s artists like Halsey who are writing about really raw emotions and raw experiences that are kind of making pop music a real story-telling medium for young people.”

“It’s making the genre less fluffy and this kind of la-la-land and making it more real and people are able to connect with it.”

Absolutely – I think people like Halsey are proving pop music has substance and I think we are going to hear a lot more from her since her break-up with G-Easy.

“Yes!”

How would you say your sound has evolved since your single Dizzy?

“When I wrote my first EP which had Dizzy on it, I was a bit younger – it was four years ago – and my influences were different. I’ve had more life experience now. You grow as a person so of course you’re going to grow as an artist. My sound is probably less-bubblegum now, it’s a little bit darker and maybe that’s because I’ve gotten a little more older and perhaps am a little more jaded.”

How are you doing since you lost your partner – Port Adelaide AFL player John MaCarthy – in 2013? And how has that experience shaped you?

“It definitely shaped me as a person, it would be remiss of me to say it didn’t. I was quite young – I was only 24-years-old – and it was a really heavy thing to go through so young. But its definitely made me re-evaluate the important things in life. I have a new partner now and he’s amazing.”

I’ve lost someone close to me as well – and there is that moment of ‘I’ll never recover from this, I don’t see an end to this feeling – but you do get through it. The human will is incredible…

“You’re in this massive hole and you think there’s absolutely no way that you could ever possibly feel happy again – or feel anything other than absolute sadness. But I think something that a lot of people around me helped me to remember to be grateful. Just to wake up in the morning and go ‘the sun is shining’. I have something to say and I have so much to give. And I threw myself into music.”

We’re just getting to know you, how did you arrive at your moniker?

“Nussy was actually a nickname my former partner gave me. It kind of stuck. So when I was thinking up a stage name, it just seemed kind of natural.”

Who would be on your dream collaboration list?

“I’d love to work with producers like Flume and be on one of his tracks.”

Well your sound definitely lends itself to his…

“Thank you!”