For Akira Galaxy, making music is about more than just melodies and words and rhythms and production.

It’s about connecting with the emotional core of the song, whether she’s writing it in her bedroom, recording it in a studio or even singing it on stage four years later. She’ll do the latter Monday night at Bend’s Domino Room, where the Los Angeles-based dream-pop artist will open for The Moss.

“When you’re performing, it’s a bit like acting because you’re channeling that former version of yourself and trying to find ways that you can relate (the song) to your current state of life,” she said. “You want to express the emotion of the song in the clearest way possible so it gets across to the audience.”

This is particularly important for Galaxy right now, because she is focused on playing songs from her new five-song EP, “What’s Inside You” — four of which were written during the isolated pandemic days of 2020 and 2021.

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“During that time … I found my voice by reflecting on an older version of myself that experienced human connection, and then when that was stripped away, I was like, ‘Oh, what kind of life is this?’” she said. “I can still relate to (those songs) because they were another version of myself, but a lot has happened (since then).”

Galaxy, 24, grew up in Seattle, where she was exposed to a ton of good music via her dad’s record collection (“I just pulled out The Jam’s ‘Snap!’ the other day,” she said) and a job slinging vinyl at Easy Street Records. By the time she was in high school, she was playing in bands and trying to find friends who wanted to dive as deeply into music as she did.

“Even when I go back to Seattle these days, my dad will usually pick me up from the airport, and I feel really accomplished when I show him a new song that he hasn’t heard of or that he’s not like, ‘Oh, that sounds like this band and that band.’” Galaxy said. “It’s kind of become a thing. I’ll save up three or four songs to try to get him.”

Influences aside, the new EP reveals Galaxy as an artist who has zeroed in on her sound. Her songs are irresistibly catchy and effortlessly cool earworms that live somewhere near the intersection of hazy dream-pop and sparkling shoegaze, like indie-pop darlings Alvvays slowed down and stretched out ever so slightly, or a peppier version of hypnotic pop-rock giants Beach House. There’s also an on-the-nose cover of Massive Attack’s trip-hop classic “Teardrop” that will surprise no one at all when it shows up in a dramatic movie trailer someday.

The EP sounds terrific, and it includes vocals that Galaxy recorded in her bedroom on an inexpensive microphone that she got when she was 16 years old. She tried to re-do them in the studio, but could never quite get them to sound right.

“Those original vocals were so emotionally in the vortex of what I was feeling, and you just can’t beat that sometimes,” she said. “The goal is always to try to beat it, but sometimes what comes out when you’re there and you’re feeling a song so intensely is so good, and preserving that feeling is the most important thing.”

If You Go

Who: The Moss, with Akira Galaxy

When: 8 p.m. Monday, doors open 7 p.m.

Where: Domino Room, 51 NW Greenwood Ave., Bend

Cost: $20

Contact: midtownballroom.com