Beabadoobee’s career may have been catapulted by a viral TikTok sound when rapper Powfu sampled her first single ‘Coffee’ back in 2017, but she remains unsentimental about the app. ‘TikTok is shit if you’re on it constantly,’ insists the London-raised singer-songwriter who was born in the Philippines as Beatrice Kristi. ‘But it’s a great opportunity for artists to show their work and be discovered. And I’m not going to ignore that.’

Kristi is talking down a slightly crackly phone line ahead of catching a flight to begin her stretch of UK and European music festivals, taking in Glastonbury, Mad Cool and TRNSMT. ‘I love playing gigs in Scotland; the kids are actually mental,’ she laughs. ‘One time I was in Edinburgh and I got some random guy to recite the whole Trainspotting monologue.’

The combination of tweeness and emotional honesty in her early tracks (‘I’ll make a cup of coffee with the right amount of sugar how you like it’/‘You haven’t been good for a while, is it the sound of your thoughts?’) resonated deeply with fans and pricked the ears of independent record label Dirty Hit, who she still works with today. After this fleeting trip to Europe, Beabadoobee is heading to the US where she’ll support Bleachers (Jack Antonoff’s band) on tour, as she has done for the likes of Halsey and The 1975 over the past couple of years.

Not bad company to be keeping as she ascends from bedroom indie ‘it girl’ to full-blown rock star, but the glitz doesn’t always sit well with Kristi. ‘I’m playing these shows and I wouldn’t want to change it for the world,’ she states. ‘But I’m still trying to figure myself out. I’m still trying to heal the 13-year-old girl inside of me.’ The 13-year-old Bea was ‘very unpopular, very shy and super self-conscious’, she recalls, and it was only after an unsettling expulsion from sixth form that she picked up the guitar and began writing more seriously.

While 2019 album Fake It Flowers (which reached number eight in the UK Albums Chart) was a candid deep-dive into Beabadoobee’s adolescent mind, upcoming record Beatopia sees the 22-year-old reclaiming a more whimsical world which originated in her seven-year-old imagination.

‘I created this world, Beatopia. I made a poster, made up names for every country and even had these weird symbols for every single letter of the alphabet. I was so proud of it.’ Yet this sweet memory was tainted by an unthoughtful teacher (‘a complete dickhead’ she insists) who found the poster and ridiculed her for it in front of the entire class.

The unlocked memory of Beatopia became the inspiration for Beabadoobee’s new record, where she wants not to inhabit the fictitious world but instead better understand the child that created it. ‘Writing Beatopia helped me focus on what was happening in my life, right in that very moment.’

Questions of identity make their way onto the album as she touches on bad mental health, psychedelics, the perils of growing up, and love. ‘I write a lot when I’m in love. I think it’s important to cherish that moment when you have it and write about it. In all honesty, the best songs I write are my love songs. I am a big romantic. Maybe it’s time to grow up a little bit.’

Beatopia certainly feels like Beabadoobee’s most sophisticated album yet. The continued 90s indie-rock influences are also impossible to ignore, despite Kristi’s frustrations of always being saddled with the comparison.

‘It’s really flattering that people say they feel nostalgic towards my music, but in no way am I trying to recreate or revive this whole thing. Everything is inspired by something and every generation wants to romanticise a generation before them. It’s just an inevitability. We’re going to be in the year 3000 and everyone’s going to be doing what we’re doing now.’

Beabadoobee plays the King Tut’s Stage at TRNSMT on Friday 8 July; Beatopia is released by Dirty Hit on Friday 15 July.