Squirrel Flower, the project of Chicago-based musician Ella O'Connor Williams, has released her fourth album, Say A Prayer To The Gods Of Getting Going. In a new interview with Stereogum, Williams discusses the record's 11 tracks, which explore themes of solitude, connection and the tension between feeling immortal and confronting human fragility, often through the lens of landscapes she has travelled through. She frames songwriting as a demanding, almost spiritual process rather than an easy or optimised one, pushing back against the idea that creative struggle is something to be eliminated.

In the conversation, Williams describes songs as needing to be respected "as an entity, as a sentient thing" and cites the album's centrepiece track "Highway Woman" as feeling like a divine message from elsewhere. She reflects on how her sense of place shifted after moving from the East Coast to Iowa, where the expansive landscape initially unsettled her. Williams also pushes back on comments from Suno CEO Mikey Shulman, who suggested AI could make music-making easier and more enjoyable, arguing instead that discomfort and difficulty are valuable, productive parts of the creative process.