Zola Jesus, aka Seattle-based singer-­songwriter Nika Roza Danilova, has come a long way since the haunting, gloomy, artfully damaged postpunk she started recording at home (and eventually releasing) in the late aughts. The brand-new Taiga is her fifth full-length album, and the first since she departed chic New York indie label Sacred Bones for Mute Records; it’s as much of a culmination of her past work as it is a confident step forward. The album pays its respects to her upbringing—the dramatic goth synths are intact, and its title could be read as a reference to the weather and terrain in her childhood hometown of Merrill, Wisconsin. But its bold, immaculate pop also builds upon Danilova’s relatively symphonic work with composer J.G. Thirlwell and the Mivos Quartet on last year’s Versions. Her assured, sirenlike singing connects the title track’s cavernous, minimalist opening passages to its glistening, club-ready finale, which she punches up with a refined drum ‘n’ bass loop. Taiga is futuristic underground pop that’s made for above­ground celebrations.

So people are kind of trading off between playing synth and keyboards and—?

It depends on what I’m trying to express and the means with which I need to express it. If there’s a concept, I’ll start with lyrics and then I’ll do vocals. If there’s a musical idea—like for the song “Hunger” on my new record, I wanted a really fast, intense beat, almost like a reggaeton song. So I tried to figure, “OK, how can I make a reggaeton song make sense for Zola Jesus?” You find these little things that are interesting to you, and they’re like threads, and you just follow the threads until they give you a song.

Working with brass was helpful in tying it all together—some of the songs on the record have brass, and it’s all being used in a very similar way. That was kind of like the stamp or the skin of the record.

It can be really interesting.

I’ve been really loyal to these songs, because they’ve never been played live before. They’re very much like the record. There’s live brass happening, there’s live percussion happening, so it feels just like “the live version.” Which is exciting, because they’re so bombastic and larger than life and kind of jumping out of your headphones. I feel like they’re made for the stage—it’s very easy to translate them. The more that I play songs—like my older songs, I have no loyalty to. I totally bastardize them and chop them up. I’ve been really excited now to bring them back, so I’m planning the original version of “Sea Talk”—my older songs, some of them I’m playing, like, the very first version, just kind of as a reward to my fans to let them know that those versions still exist and they’re still very valid. But yeah, songs are alive, and they’re bound to change and evolve.

Thu 10/16, 8 PM Thalia Hall $20 floor, $30 balcony 17+

Zola Jesus (DJ set), Zebo, Jeremiah Meece, Many Moons (DJ set), Heaven Malone Thu 10/16, 10 PM Berlin $7, $5 with RSVP at do312.com/stardust 21+

Interzone: A Burroughs Birthday Bash Anne Waldman, Eileen Myles, Tony Trigilio, Davis Schneiderman, Don Meyer, Sasha Frere-Jones, Jon Langford, Thomas Comerford, Sally Timms, and Daniel Knox celebrate William S. Burroughs’s 100th birthday. Sat 11/1, 7:30 PM Co-Prosperity Sphere 3219 S. Morgan $20, $15 CHF members, $10 students and teachers All-ages