There’s a lot to unpack on Outline of a Girl, the debut album from Lou Mclean. Beyond its shimmery veneer, there’s Newhaven fishwives, workplace harassment, late-stage capitalism and matriarchal workplace solidarity. If you’re approaching this as background music then you can still enjoy Outline of a Girl as a competent punk/disco/indie-pop record, but engaging with the messages through its genesis and lyrics will open up a whole new world.

Mclean demonstrates her depth of research and respect for the musical traditions from moment one on ‘Worksong’; a quirky update on “waulking” songs, a Scottish call and response folk style usually sung in Gaelic while women worked on fulling cloth. It’s a simple, repetitive song that will earworm its way into your head while also managing to draw parallels between that underpaid and under-appreciated work, and the work of women and artists (or both) today.

This is by far most “academic” moment of the album, but the concerns about the toll of emotional labour in a cruel, algorithm-driven economy are present in almost every song. ‘Peace’ is the most overtly dancefloor-inflected moment, and still delivers a stark message about confronting trauma, while ‘Good Content’ harks back to early ’00s pop-punk with a snarky take on the Sisyphean struggle that is the music industry. ‘Jailbait’ delivers the one-liners on par with the latest from Lambrini Girls, all cynical sass and rage, but where they scream their harsh truths, Mclean sneaks her messages in in a more palatable package; you might find yourself guilty-bopping to a song that ends with the repeated refrain: “Aren’t you supposed to be the good guy?”

Mclean has been a feature of the scene in Scotland for the better part of a decade and this album demonstrates a maturity in terms of production and craft that a young upstart simply couldn’t do. Carla J. Easton is behind the boards, and the band is a cast of players from Belle & Sebastian, Altered Images and Day Sleeper. This may be a debut album, but it’s one borne from hard graft at the skill of songwriting over a number of years. In lieu of the typical tour in support of the album, Mclean is running a series of workshops that allow anyone to have a crack at writing a song, discuss the thought-provoking topics of Outline of a Girl and beyond, and maybe hear a few acoustic renditions. It’s a genuine act from an artist who isn’t using the unique background as a means to push sales, but is clearly invested in the stories she has chosen to tell.

This isn’t a dour, academic exercise, though – you might learn something along the way or be inspired to do a little digging yourself, but there are plenty of sugar-rush highs and melodic hooks to keep you dancing and singing. With Outline of a Girl, you can have it all.