Regina Spektor calls them sandcastles. There’s a million of them, songs that rise up and multiply in her brain — the fruits of months, sometimes years, of channeling and crafting. But what happens to them when it’s time to make new music? “They all have to be slowly washed away. Some of them are really well built, and they’re really high up on the beach,” she says. “It all has to be gone, and then I can start to hear new songs and make a new record.”

Starting with a clean slate, with six momentous years between albums, Spektor returned in 2022 with Home, before and after. The eagerly awaited eighth studio album was the follow-up to 2016’s Remember Us to Life. It paired Spektor with John Congleton (St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen), who produced the album from afar in Los Angeles with Spektor co-producing in upstate New York.

The years between her albums weren’t exactly fallow. In 2016, at her friend Lin-Manuel Miranda’s invitation, she contributed a song (“Dear Theodosia,” featuring Ben Folds) to The Hamilton Mixtape. Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declared Regina Spektor Day in her hometown in June 2019, she got a street sign with her name at the Bronx Walk of Fame, and that same month staged a sold out residency on Broadway at the legendary Lunt- Fontanne Theatre.

Her work for television and film continued. “You’ve Got Time,” from Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, entered the pantheon of classic TV theme songs, so much so that Spektor released an orchestral version of the award-winning tune for the final episode. She wrote “One Little Soldier” for the closing credits of the film Bombshell and multiple songs for the animated series Central Park.

Time has been kind to Spektor’s work. Twenty years have passed since she self-released her 2001 debut, 11:11, which recently received a remastered reissue, as well as a limited-edition box set. In the decades since, Spektor, who was born in Moscow, Russia and raised in the Bronx, New York, has defied classification. With a sophisticated marriage of classical training and a gift for sharp pop hooks and nuanced lyrics, she has created her own genre. She makes Regina Spektor music.