MØ has been a punk teenager, indie darling, and chart-topper. Now, she's growing up.

• MØ recently spoke to Insider about her new album "Motordrome," which arrives on Friday.
• After years of touring, the album was inspired by her experiences with panic attacks and burnout.

In an alternate timeline, MØ's new album might be called "Hamster Wheel."

In early 2019, after touring nonstop for several years, the Danish singer-songwriter knew it was time to recalibrate. Her nerves were fried. Her head was spinning. She was having regular panic attacks, desperate to rest but scared to disappear from public view.

When she retreated back to Denmark, MØ's mother said her brain reminded her of "dødsdrom," or, motordrome, the carnival performance where motorcyclists whip around an upright barrel quickly enough to defy gravity.

"If you stop, you crash," MØ explained matter-of-factly during a recent Zoom interview with Insider.

The term stuck with her, kept in her pocket like a talisman as she sat down to write songs again. Finally, she had a concrete visual to communicate her mental state, and a title for her highly-anticipated third album, out Friday.

Unified and tenacious, "Motordrome" fuses private revelations with open-armed melodies and body-friendly beats. It sounds like group therapy led by your local witchy dance instructor — think less Zumba, more freestyle.

"For so many years, taking a break had just not really been an option," MØ said. "I was trapped in this idea that I had to keep going, and I might lose what I had if I stopped and if I took time for myself."

"I guess people also call it the hamster wheel," she added. "But 'Motordrome' was a little bit more poetic."

MØ got her start making punk music, but shot to fame with one of the past decade's biggest dance hits

Born Karen Marie Ørsted, MØ launched her music career by thrashing and thriving in the local punk scene of Funen, Denmark.

At 17, she formed an electro-punk duo called MOR with her best friend. Before long, she enrolled in art school and conceived her alter-ego in 2009 as an "art project."

Although her solo music as MØ has christened everything from alt-pop to murky R&B, she nodded enthusiastically when I mentioned her punk roots, describing the fluid genre as "the weird."

"When I play live, I always tap into that energy a little bit because that's the space where I feel the freest," she said.

"I remember as a kid, when going to local punk shows, I would just be so overwhelmed with inspiration and excitement to see these artists rolling on the floor and shouting and banging into each other. That's the energy I want to give the audience."

MØ released her debut studio album, "No Mythologies to Follow," in 2014. Then, her career exploded as the featured vocalist on Major Lazer's "Lean On," the biggest hit of 2015.

Fueled by MØ's whimsical words, encouraging us to be open and tender in times of conflict ("Blow a kiss/Fire a gun/We all need someone to lean on"), "Lean On" was quickly crowned by Spotify as its most-streamed track of all time. It was recently certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Diplo, one-third of Major Lazer, has said the song was originally offered to both Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, but called their rejections "a blessing in disguise."

MØ, he told Time in 2015, "sounds better than anybody was going to sound on that record."

"I was very much just an up-and-coming indie-pop artist," MØ recalled to Insider. "That song, just all of a sudden, made all the doors swing open for me. And it was truly overwhelming, but it was also the adventure of my life. I can't believe how insanely fun that was."

However, the sustained popularity of "Lean On" has been somewhat mired in backlash. The music video, predominantly filmed in India, features MØ, French producer DJ Snake, and Major Lazer's three original members performing Bollywood-inspired choreography while surrounded by South Asian dancers.

When asked to weigh in on accusations of cultural appropriation, MØ praised Major Lazer's "cool style" overall, though she did not attempt to defend the visual concept of "Lean On."

"I definitely think it's cultural appropriation, for sure," she told Insider. "And I'm so happy that people were making me aware of it because, at the time, I didn't really understand."

"I understand it much better now," she continued. "I'm still learning. It's really something that I think a lot about now, with aesthetics and how I approach my look and myself and my songs. I'm not perfect and it's a learning process, but, I mean, it was problematic."

'Motordrome' sees MØ learning from her mistakes without losing her sense of wonder and glee

"Goosebumps," the first song written for the album, marks MØ's return home, both physically and emotionally. She revels in the rediscovery of her own wants and needs — and subtly scolds the pressure to cover soft spots and stifle primal instincts, a culture she described as "old school masculinity." (The lyrics include "Release your hunger into the world," as well as, "Tell the misses you forgive her.")

"It shouldn't just be, 'Work hard. Play hard. Do the job. Don't show emotions.' Such bullshit. It's such bullshit," MØ said. "It's the highway to mental-health issues. So that is important for me on this album to talk about that."

Indeed, this theme reappears throughout "Motordrome," from "Cool to Cry" ("Let your tears flow like a fountain") to "Hip Bones" ("Come let your fears be free").

"When you're vulnerable and when you need a break and when you need those things, that shouldn't be something that's like, 'Oh, no.' It should be something that is celebrated," she said.

Despite her commercial success as a collaborator, the credits on "Motordrome" are refreshingly sparse. Every song lists MØ as the primary lyricist, none include a featured vocalist, and only her close friends and confidants were invited to produce or cowrite.

While this is partially a result of the pandemic and literal isolation, MØ also said she embraced the opportunity to explore her own "little universe."

The tracklist itself is similarly restrained. With just 10 songs, "Motordrome" is a triumph of brevity in a world of ever-growing album lengths and deluxe editions. Today, more songs mean more opportunities to rack up streaming numbers or land on a top Spotify playlist.

But MØ stayed true to the essence of "Motordrome," making a point to stop herself before the creative process became a neverending "nightmare," she said. In other words, she declined to hop back on the hamster wheel.

"I tend to overthink and to over-complicate things. So with this one, I was just like, 'Keep it short,'" she explained. "I could keep working on it, but that's not healthy."

Just as MØ comes across in real life — as a woman who's worked hard to find balance amid chaos — "Motordrome" tells the same story.

Nearly every song is a testament to the resilience and insight that comes with age. "New Moon" sees MØ rise from the ashes of emotional manipulation. In "Youth Is Lost," she serenades her younger self with remarkable warmth, carefully selecting pieces of her past to bring with her into the future — she'll still be kissing her crush in a field of dandelions, but she's done with romanticizing trauma.

Shortly after turning 30, MØ, who was promoting her second album "Forever Neverland," anxiously fretted in an interview with GQ, "Fuck! Youth is over."

Now, at 33, she said she refuses to feel "intimidated" by that simple fact: "I'm still young, but a certain part of my youth is over, and it should be over."

With "Forever Neverland," she explained, "I was a bit lost and I was singing about this lostness."

"Whereas with this album, it's waking up on ground zero and just trying to build yourself back up again and your inner strength," she said. "Part of that inner strength, I think, is to find a way to maintain the child, but also move on."