Burhenn has gone through big personal changes lately, including a move to Los Angeles (from Omaha, Nebraska) and a difficult breakup. She says it had been her longest relationship yet.

“I think our generation particularly struggles with intimacy and the concept of long-term relationships,” says Burhenn, who used to play in D.C. indie-pop band Georgie James. “We’re a generation who — most of us — are a product of divorced families, and I think we just don’t have faith in long-term love.”

But Burhenn says she hasn’t lost all of her faith. A couple of songs on the album — including “Semantics” and opener “All My Heart” — express being heartbroken while holding onto hope.

“‘Semantics,'” Burhenn says, “is about arguing with a lover — or even with yourself — [about whether] the glass [is] half full or half empty. At the end of the day, someone might say, ‘Well, it’s the same amount of water. It doesn’t matter what you call it,’” Burhenn says. “I’m like, ‘No, it does matter.’ In order to be hopeful… you have to espouse that whole philosophy.”

Both the album’s lyrics and music depart dramatically from her band’s 2012 album, GENERALS.

“I’m a big fan of artists who aren’t afraid to delve into new types of music, and even take on whole new personas album to album,” Burhenn says. “People like David Bowie or PJ Harvey.”

This album, Burhenn says, feels dreamier and more lush. It sounds more electronic, drawing from the 1980s and ‘90s, and touches on a few different themes. GENERALS was much more politically charged, raw and rhythmic.

“On my album GENERALS, I was asking this question: ‘What can we do in the face of so many things that are wrong in the world, and what is it that can make us feel or be powerful individually?’” Burhenn says.

Asking that question led to an awakening.

“At the end of the album I kind of came to the answer: love. Love is the answer,” she says. “And I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s so trite.’ But I think it kind of set me up to make an album of love songs.”

The Mynabirds play U Street Music Hall Sept. 26. See the band perform “Wildfire” live for KEXP.

Though spurred by heartbreak, Burhenn’s new songs still convey hope. Here, she and her band visit the KEXP studio to perform “Wildfire” and other songs from Lovers Know.

SET LIST

• “Wildfire”

Watch The Mynabirds’ full performance on KEXP’s YouTube channel.

Copyright 2015 KEXP-FM. To see more, visit http://www.kexp.org/.

The Mynabirds has always produced multifaceted, intricate indie pop songs, usually centered around Burhenn’s rich, throaty voice and her keyboard, played sometimes for fizzy fun and sometimes for poignant melancholy. Lovers Know is certainly both multi-faceted and intricate, but it’s also writ larger than anything else Burhenn has done with The Mynabirds. It relies heavily on a Casio keyboard (not exactly the one she used to play NPR’s South X Lullaby, but close), which lends an ’80s ballad throwback feel to “All My Heart” and “Wildfire,” tech-savvy, futuristic soundscapes to “Believer” and “Say Something,” and a little of both to “Semantics” and the distinctly Sega-adjacent “Shake Your Head Yes.” Burhenn’s voice sounds well-traveled, due in part to her low vocal range and her restrained, deliberate delivery, but never crosses over into world-weariness. Lovers Know sounds like a collection of jewels, bright and eclectic, collected from points near and far, and Burhenn sounds like a wanderer who knows exactly where she’s going.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.