“What up!” Phoebe Ryan exclaims, elongating the second vowel in practiced California fashion. She’s just entered the green room of Lower Manhattan’s Bowery Ballroom after posting a pre-show Snapchat story for her fans, flashing a peace sign before laughing and making intros.

Wearing a custom-made, sheer, white top with “RYAN” sewn across the chest in slight fabric flowers and a high-waist, Beetlejuice-striped skirt, she takes a seat while drawing her parrot-green hair away from her face. It’s the kind of cute but loud pop-punk aesthetic that, on others, may seem fabricated, but Ryan wears it effortlessly. Though she admits to being an insecure “nerd” in the past (the video for “Chronic” is a just case in point), she preps for her Bowery Ballroom outing with a carefree ease. It’s not surprising to learn that she’s a beach girl. Having grown up in New Jersey with an artist mother and a shoe-designer father before moving to Los Angeles, she possesses a bohemian calm befitting of her background.

Ryan developed her poise over the last few years, when the singer—who’d always had dreams of a solo career—decided to take her experience writing for other artists and use it to refocus on herself.

“I just really felt like I had the confidence to start telling my own story,” she says. “I just was like, ‘O.K., I’m super-ready for this. I feel very confident about it. Let’s do it.’ . . . Being able to push that voice out of you and speak up, it’s hard. I’m learning every day.”

Tonight, July 6, is only the second night of her first-ever headlining national tour (titled the Boyz n Poizn Tour), and Ryan has sold out her Manhattan stop. This marks the closest thing she’ll get to a homecoming—she went from New Jersey to studying at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at N.Y.U. before moving west. She spent her college years at concert halls not unlike this one. But if she’s nervous, she hides it well.

And why would she be nervous, anyway? It’s a good time to be Phoebe Ryan.

It’s been just over a year since the indie songstress first popped onto the blogosphere with her svelte remix of R. Kelly’s “Ignition” and Miguel’s “Do You . . .”—an unexpected mash-up that showed off her pop sensibility and production savvy, along with her distinct, wispy vocals. She piggybacked off of that hype with her debut EP, Mine, via Columbia Records in June 2015—which proved that her catalogue of originals is just as promising as that cover. It even earned her a nod from Taylor Swift, who included the release’s titular track on an impromptu list of “New Songs That Will Make Your Life More Awesome (I promise!)” last October. Ryan has no words for that experience other than “crazy,” and she hopes to thank Swift in person one day.

Her singles over the last year have further proven Ryan’s solo staying power. Just try not to sing along to the aforementioned “Chronic,” her playful ode to kissing California boys. “Boyz n Poizn” is another standout, featuring summery, lackadaisical production and what Ryan calls “witchy” turns of phrase—“All I do is enjoy ’em, destroy ’em / Until I feel what I wanna feel”—that are as sexy as they are beguiling.

“There’s a certain style of writing I like that’s very honest and very clear and to the point,” Ryan says. “Just like what you would say in a conversation to somebody—put that down on paper and then sing it. That’s what I want to hear.”

It’s an approach that has worked well so far. While simultaneously crafting her forthcoming, yet-untitled debut LP, she’s toured with teen heartthrob Charlie Puth and to this day, stays busy writing for other artists—most recently, her manager confirms, Usher, Tori Kelly, and Britney Spears.

“Name-dropping, love it!” Ryan says sarcastically when asked to recite her flashy résumé. “I’m writing for all these people, and they’re amazing, they’re fantastic. We’re just still in the process of seeing what makes the record. But those kinds of artists are the ones that I really look up to.”

As in her songwriting, there are few frills to Ryan in person. Immediately approachable, she’s not far from the persona showcased in her music videos: cheerful, a little left of center, not shy about being a goof. She’s quick to be self-deprecating and is a self-professed theater nerd. That lighthearted nature comes with a pinch of tomboyish panache—she can likely thank her two brothers for that. Her way of speaking, speckled with surf-culture jargon and laid-back ease, makes you think she’s perfectly content with where she is. It’s an every-cool-girl charm that, when paired with her earwormy indie pop, has piqued the attention of many a teenage heart—boys and girls alike.

Fittingly, Ryan, now 25, admits to having a particular nostalgia for those teenage wonder years. You’ll see it in her “Chronic” video, which stars Ryan as a high-school outcast—peers are shown literally throwing garbage at her—who re-invents herself as a drop-dead rocker, melting “some freakin’ faces off of their faces” at the homecoming dance.

“I totally do have a weird idea of what high school maybe was supposed to be like, because I was super nerdy in high school,” Ryan says. “Other than the theater kids, I wasn’t really paid attention to. It was all the theater kids, all the artsy kids [who thought I was] talented. But everyone else was kind of just mean and terrible. So when I think about high school, I just want to be like, ‘I’m cool now!’ Maybe I could go back to high school and be cool.”

That’s not to say, however, that she still takes stock in the popular kids’ opinion.

“How people view me, I’m just, like, whatever. I’m chillin’,” Ryan affirms. “You can do whatever you want, say whatever you want.”

That sentiment goes for anybody who’s questioned her for pursuing her lifelong aspiration to be a solo artist: “Anyone along the way who is like that, is somebody that I keep far away. You’re not invited to my birthday party if that’s how you feel. You’re just not!”

Ryan’s rise may well mark a new kind of pop-music mantra. You won’t find any feminist kiss-offs on her discography thus far; instead, her songs resist validating those who’ve crossed her by refusing to acknowledge their scorn in the first place. And she doesn’t need a Meghan Trainor–esque “No” to set love’s playing field straight. She’s too busy having fun—as seen in her mid-summer entry to the airwaves, “Dollar Bill,” featuring Kid Ink, the music video for which we’re pleased to premiere exclusively below.

“‘Dollar Bill’ is a song that I wrote last summer,” Ryan says. “I Airbnb-ed a 20-foot yacht with some friends. It sounds so fancy, but it’s the tiniest yacht. So we wrote it on a yacht, and we decided to write a song about money. The video is really cool because we wanted to do something fun and kind of cheeky. We were like, ‘O.K., let’s go to Vegas. Let’s have the time of our lives. Let’s see what happens.’ I rented a [McLaren Spider], lime green, suicide doors. I was just driving that thing all over Vegas, whipping it around the strip. It’s fun. We’re not taking it too seriously.”

Later, at Bowery Ballroom, Ryan premieres “Dollar Bill” not just for her New York crowd, but via a live Facebook stream that has racked up a couple thousand views in two days’ time. Segueing from a rousing take on her R. Kelly–Miguel cover (“Man, I’ll tell you what: I’m definitely gonna cry if you guys don’t get down right about now!”), Ryan gets the crowd dancing like they’ve heard the song before—and it’s no wonder, with that soaring, infectious, Carly Rae Jepsen–tinged chorus: “’Cause, baby, I’m just living life / Giving my all, all day and night / Not gonna stop until / They're putting my face on the dollar bill.”

As for what else is in store, Ryan assures that her debut LP is on its way. “It’s gonna happen soon. I’m just working my ass off in the studio every day when I’m not on tour.” But the remaining dates of her “Boyz n Poizn” headlining tour still have plenty of treats for concertgoers, including more new music. A particular highlight from her Bowery Ballroom outing was “Excited,” which the crowd would agree earned its name that night. And her solo rendition of “We Won’t,” a down-tempo R&B synth-ballad she originally sang with Jaymes Young, gave everyone pause. Catch her between now and July 24, when she wraps it all up in Seattle, Washington.

“I still am expecting to walk out there and have just my parents and their friends—they bought all the tickets,” Ryan had joked before jumping onstage. “I haven’t even really let it sink in yet.”