This episode is made possible by PWC.

If you're curious how artificial intelligence is reshaping our lives and redefining what's possible,

listen to the most interesting thing in AI, a podcast produced by Atlantic Rethink, the Atlantic's

Creative Marketing Studio, in collaboration with PWC.

Just a quick note, this episode contains some cursing that you might not usually hear on this show.

Nico Case is one of those musicians that people have really strong personal attachments to,

especially indie music lovers of a certain generation.

Like I know two people who have named a child after her.

Nico Case is a lead vocalist of the indie pop collective, the new pornographers,

and she's also had a long solo career.

But what's most distinct about her are her lyrics, which are often oblique.

Like a song seems to be about a car crash, but maybe it's about incomplete grief.

You have to listen a few times before you get closer to it.

And then there are lots of times when Kay seems to be writing about herself.

But it's not entirely clear.

Were they trying to tell me something?

Were they telling me to run?

This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Hannah Rosen. Last month, Niko Case peeled back some of the mystery. She's written a memoir called The Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, which shares part of the same title as one of her albums from 2013. She writes about growing up poor and neglected. Her parents were teenagers when they had her, and her guess is that neither

of them ever wanted a child. By the end of her sophomore year in high school, she asked her mom

for emancipation. She writes, quote, she couldn't sign it quickly enough.

She didn't even have to think it over.

And so Case hid a lot behind her music.

...