“No one told me,” says singer-songwriter Domino Kirke, her soft, dreamy voice growing sharper with each word. “No one prepared me. No one is talking about it.”

The New York-based musician, birth educator, and mother of two—with twins on the way—is reflecting on the first stillbirth she witnessed as a doula. “It rewired me,” she says, describing the deep sense of injustice she felt while holding a stillborn baby for the first time. “Like birth, you never get used to it. You realize how close we are to death, and after that, nothing feels certain.”

Kirke knows this isn’t typical interview material. But at 42, she’s determined to talk about the things most people avoid—especially on her new album, The Most Familiar Star, out April 18. It’s an unflinchingly honest record, co-written with Eliot Krimsky and produced by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, exploring themes like miscarriage, birth, sexual abuse, parental neglect, and love—maternal, romantic, and the complicated kind shared with an ex. “How do we hold all these truths at once without collapsing?” she asks, half-rhetorically.

On paper, Kirke’s upbringing seemed idyllic. Born in London, she moved to the U.S. at 12 with her parents—English rock drummer Simon Kirke and fashion icon Lorraine Kirke—and settled in New York with her siblings, including actresses Jemima and Lola Kirke. “We had the parties, the famous names, the beautiful homes—the chaos, the excitement, the glamour,” she says. “But there was no real parenting. Ever.”

She studied classical piano and voice at La Guardia High School in Queens, pursuing a solo music career until an unplanned pregnancy at 26 shifted her path. After giving birth to her son, Cassius, and feeling abandoned by her family, artist community, and even her birth team, she stepped away from music and trained as a doula. In 2012, she co-founded Carriage House Birth, a childbirth collective that grew from 10 to over 100 doulas in New York and L.A. within five years. Later, she helped launch Brooklyn’s Grand Street Healing Project, a community wellness space.

“My work was a crash course in intimacy,” Kirke says. “I saw hundreds of families surrounded by love and support—something I couldn’t relate to. And there I was, just giving, giving, giving—” She pauses, steadying her voice. “I had my son at home while caring for others. There was so much imbalance in my life.”

Eventually, she shifted focus, spending more time with her son while writing music about staying grounded—though she never stopped mentoring doulas. The Most Familiar Star is her latest creative offering, but this time, it’s for herself first.

The album opens with “Mercy,” a haunting track built around a swelling piano and cello, with lyrics like: You’re still out there, I can see your face in time / You’re still out there, but you’ve barely been mine. Kirke wrote it after a second miscarriage with her husband, actor Penn Badgley, whom she recently celebrated eight years of marriage with. “I was still bleeding from the D&C when I sat at the piano and just asked, Who was this soul, and where did they go?”

Then there’s “Teething,” the album’s eerie closing track—a raw, almost taunting love song about the end of her relationship with her eldest son’s father, folk musician Morgan O’Kane. “The person who made me—””A mother,” she says. “Growing up, I dealt with a lot of door slamming, physical abuse—very much that Boomer generation anger, the yelling. My parents would fight and leave me alone, wondering, ‘Was I bad? Am I bad?’ So ‘Teething’ is my way of telling my son and his dad, ‘I’ll never do that to you.'”

Between songs like “Stepchild,” which explores blended families, and “Secret Growing,” which addresses the sexual abuse Kirke endured as a child—only to quickly repress the memory—the album weaves through heavy themes. “Secret Growing” begins with a dreamy, nostalgic flute and electronic organ before the lyrics cut in: “I was just sleeping, six years old, family loud downstairs / Drunk on wine / I kept one eye on the ceiling, he stole my time.”

“Talking about childhood sexual abuse in a song? Most people would say, ‘No, thank you!'” she admits. “But we only hurt each other by staying silent.”

The album’s lead single, “It’s Not There,” featuring Angel Olsen and built around a Sharon Van Etten sample, carries a haunting, melancholic mood—like something out of a David Lynch film. Layers of electronics blend with a small orchestra—bass, flute, sax, clarinet, percussion—creating a submerged, dreamlike soundscape. “It’s about searching for my old self and realizing it’s gone,” Kirke explains to the crowd at The Owl in Brooklyn one late February night. Friends and fans gather close as her partner, Badgley, sits in the back, holding their sleeping four-year-old. Kirke, cradling the mic with one hand and resting the other on her pregnant belly, her long brown hair spilling over a black knit dress, closes her eyes and sings: “Time takes time to reveal / You know you know you never heal.”

“Motherhood brings both loss and renewal,” she reflects. “That’s why people in the birth community call it ‘threshold work.’ Because birth is life and death. It’s everything.”

The Most Familiar Star arrives April 18.