K.Flay is using her outside voice on her new EP.

The five-track collection, titled Inside Voices, shows off a more aggressive side of the "Blood in the Cut" artist's sound. As she tells ABC Audio, that direction was inspired by her emotional state amid the COVID-19 pandemic, during which she experienced a "re-engagement with the cathartic power of music."

"I became increasingly interested in heavy music, in brash lyrics, brash sounds, and almost a little bit of a confrontational perspective," she explains.

You can certainly hear that brashness in the EP's "thesis statement" "Four Letter Words," as well as the Tom Morello-featuring "TGIF" and the just-dropped, surprising introspective Travis Barker collaboration, "Dating My Dad."

"I was really looking to explore the id inside of myself," K.Flay says. "What is that voice, that sort of primal and screaming and animalistic [sound]...What is it saying, and why might that be useful to express?"

In that way, Inside Voices sounds like an extended, deeper exploration of K.Flay's song "Run for Your Life," which she recorded for the 2018 Tomb Raider movie. While "Run for Your Life" never ran through her mind amid recording Inside Voices, she's retroactively noticed a parallel between the song and the EP.

"I think when I was writing that song, I was kind of envisioning myself as Lara Croft, who is a bada**," K.Flay says, referring to the iconic video game character. "So it strikes me as no surprise that this EP has that spirit, because I think I've been working on accepting my inner bada** in a different way."

Inside Voices will be released this Friday.

(Video contains uncensored profanity.)

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