Lydia Ainsworth isn’t new to the process of making music, the Torontonian having been turned on to playing the cello in her performing-arts school at age 10, and then later studying film-score composition in New York. But even though she’s been putting herself out there as long as she can remember, the process of becoming comfortable on-stage was a gradual one. In 2014 Ainsworth made the transition from behind the scenes to touring singer-songwriter, releasing her crafted-in-the-bedroom debut album, Right From Real. She’d take a while to find her footing.

“I think I needed the experience of performing,” Ainsworth says, on the line from Hogtown. “In the beginning, I would basically stand behind my keyboard playing it the entire time whenever I got on-stage. I was really shy at first for my first record, and it took me a while to get over that. Now I have a few songs that I play keyboards on, but it’s all much more natural. I feel like I’m free on-stage. It’s really important to connect with your audience, and I’m way more confident in my expression of connection.”

It didn’t hurt that Right From Real was lauded as something of a minor art-pop masterpiece, the accolades gushing reviews from the usual online tastemakers, and profiles in outlets like Pitchfork. Perhaps thanks in part to the relentlessly positive feedback, the singer has grown in other ways over the past few years, that abundantly clear on her just-released sophomore album, Darling of the Afterglow. A large part of the record’s charm is its surprises, with the baroque-pop diamond “Open Doors” as beautiful as a sun-flooded Sunday until the funereal cello creeps in. Or the way a cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” is stripped down to a smoky piano ballad Lana Del Rey might happily sink her fangs into.

The record started with a trip to Los Angeles, where Ainsworth was determined to begin working with other songwriters. Instead, she’d end up inspired all over again, that leading to songs like “WLCM”, where angelic vocals float over pillowy synths.

“Before going to L.A., I thought the album was done,” she says. “It hadn’t been mastered or anything, but I was pretty happy with how it had shaped up. Then what happened is that I wrote a bunch of songs in L.A. that I became really possessive of. I couldn’t let them go—it became like, ‘These are for me—I can’t let anyone else sing them.’ Like my last song is called ‘WLCM’—which stands for ‘What Love Can Mean’. And that I just wrote by myself in my bedroom in L.A. It was one of those magical things where it just came out instantaneously, so I was like, ‘Okay, that needs to go on the album as well.’ ”

While parts of Darling of the Afterglow slot in nicely in a record collection heavy on the likes of Kate Bush, Björk, Grimes, and similar boundary-expanding visionaries, it’s also clear that Ainsworth is following her own path. Consider the way that “What Is It” fuses chamber-orchestra synths with back-porch banjo and trip-hop percussion. Or the way “Nighttime Watching” sounds like the call to prayer in Turkey set to ghostly vocals and strings that seem straight out of the jungles of Cambodia.

“That’s a track that I began a long time ago while I was living in New York,” Ainsworth recounts of the latter song. “What you hear are sounds that I recorded while living in my small apartment—almost field recordings. I sampled my friend playing noisy, extended things on an oboe, for example. So I had this track laying around without any vocals on it, that I just needed some perspective on. The song was, like, five or six years old before I finally added stuff on top.”

She continues with: “I like each song to be almost a world unto itself—it’s really exciting to me when songs create their own soundscapes each time. I’m not someone who really needs to have an album of all the same-sounding-type songs. I feel like that’s a trend for a lot of bands today, where they have to stick to some similar, I dunno, almost brand for their songs. That’s really boring to me.”

And that’s a sure sign that, as certainly as she’s dabbled in different disciplines in the past, Ainsworth is already looking to expand her scope as an artist in the future.

“Whether it’s dance or film or art—I’m inspired by it all,” she says. “I went to an arts high school growing up here in Toronto, and all my friends were dancers or they were in theatre—all different kinds of art. From the very beginning I’ve performed with dancers at my shows whenever I can. A dancer named Jennifer Rose—who I first met in the beginning when I lived in New York—just choreographed some things for my first three shows this tour in D.C., Philly, and New York. It’s nice to reconnect with people I’ve known over the years and bring them into what I’m doing today.”

Lydia Ainsworth plays the Fox Cabaret on Thursday (May 4).