Eight years ago when a viral video thrust Maggie Rogers into the spotlight, she quickly went from NYU music student to public figure, garnering the type of cult following where the lines between artist and therapist start to blur. Since then, she has made efforts to slow things down. “I started to realize that there was this functional misalignment with the work that I had trained to do and the work that I was being asked to perform,” she told The New Yorker, explaining her decision to enroll in Harvard Divinity School in 2022. “I was put in this unconventional ministerial position without having undergone any of the training.” If strangers were going to look to her for guidance, her thinking went, then the best she could do would be to rise to the occasion.

Her new album, Don’t Forget Me, released on the cusp of her earning her postgraduate degree, captures a self-assured songwriter and producer reflecting on her past experiences with clear eyes. Like Sheryl Crow and the Laurel Canyon scene before her, she’s not so much a prophet on the mount as she is a traveler sharing the lessons she’s learned in nearly 30 years of life. “Time moves slow/Until one day you wake up and you realize/That what you see is what you know,” she remarks on “All the Same,” deftly employing the second person. It’s comforting in the same way some of Joni Mitchell’s writing on Hejira is comforting: By acknowledging that she doesn’t have all the answers, Rogers ends up sounding wise beyond her years.

Rogers wrote and recorded Don’t Forget Me over a whirlwind five days with producer Ian Fitchuk, whose cosmic country style blends commercial Nashville songwriting with elements of disco, psychedelic rock, and Tango in the Night-era Fleetwood Mac. Some of Don’t Forget Me is reminiscent of Fitchuk’s past work—lead single “So Sick of Dreaming” especially sounds like a cut off Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour—but Rogers carries her own smattering of influences that add nuance to his now-familiar sound. Several elements, like the expansive, effects-laden backdrop on “It Was Coming All Along” and looping drums on “If Now Was Then,” are an uncanny throwback to the Y2K pop-rock that Rogers likely grew up on: your Michelle Branches, your Natalie Imbruglias, your Sixpence None the Richers. Just like those artists’ anthemic singles, Don’t Forget Me keeps Rogers’ voice front and center, swelling to complement her on each chorus. It’s a welcome change from past albums, where the songwriting could sometimes feel like window dressing to Rogers’ more ornate compositions.

Reflective of its recording process, Don’t Forget Me sets a zippy, dare I say groovy, pace. Rogers often sounds like she’s outrunning the ghost of an old flame, whether she’s breathlessly describing a moment of lust on “Drunk” or trying to dance away her demons on “Never Going Home.” Still, there’s a playfulness in how she handles these stories of heartbreak. “The Kill” is a churning spin on the push-pull dynamic of a doomed pairing where Rogers employs the classic songwriter trick of flipping the pronouns in the second chorus. And over the delightfully wobbly bassline of “On & On & On,” she delivers a forceful hook that’s guaranteed to be heard at the beach this summer.

Rogers is an accomplished singer, though not a belter in the traditional sense; while other singers might inflect the climax of a song with raw power, Rogers strains with emotion. The piano ballad “I Still Do” benefits from that delicacy, as does the acoustic track “All the Same,” which sounds like her take on the intimate, red-blooded folk of Zach Bryan. On the title track, she imitates the soaring vocals of country singers like Martina McBride and Carrie Underwood. If that honeyed, inspirational mode might be most readily associated with first dances at weddings, Rogers employs it as an act of desperation, laying out the absolute floor of what she wants in a relationship: “Take my money, wreck my Sundays/Love me till your next somebody/Oh, but promise me that when it’s time to leave/Don’t forget me.”

Even as her voice breaks towards the end, there’s a warmth to her newfound confidence. It’s a far cry from “Alaska,” the undergraduate demo track that took the words out of Pharrell’s mouth, where she recalled her first exposure to the Berlin club scene as a banjo-playing folk singer. That song juxtaposed her wide-eyed narration with electronic blips and bloops, like a baby deer stumbling into its first rave. Don’t Forget Me is, in many ways, its inverse: It inhabits parties and frantic nights out, yet the tracks carry the steady, guitar-backed propulsion of a road movie. Rogers, at last, sounds sure of her destination.