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Season two of True Detective is extremely consistent in the most unusual places. Every episode finds the characters engaging in a minimum of 1-3 staring contests. Most setting transitions come in the form of sweeping wide shots of California highways. And every damn time Velcoro (Colin Farrell) or Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn) sit down in their favorite dive bar, the same miserable-looking woman is alone on stage, plucking away at her guitar under dim yellow light. Her in-show music is the perfect soundtrack for True Detective, somber and brooding, simplistic yet keenly aware of its thematic advertence to Velcoro and Semyon’s sulking ruminations.

In the real world, the girl is Lera Lynn, and she wants you to know she’s “not playing herself in those smoky bar scenes.”

See? Pretty and colorful.

Audiences first heard the Nashville-based singer/songwriter in season two’s teaser trailer, released early in the summer. At the time, nobody knew she’d be a regular set-filler on the show itself, arguably turning True Detective’s bar room moments into an extended music video for her dark and edgy brand of Americana.

T Bone Burnett, famed record producer and the man responsible for True Detective’s music, previously worked with Lynn’s manager on one of Lynn’s former projects. He was interested in using a track from her 2015 EP on the show. Lynn told Vulture, “He scheduled a lunch meeting with me in Nashville and asked if I would be interested in co-writing with him. Of course I said yes. So I flew to L.A. and we started working on songs immediately. We wrote and recorded several songs in a matter of two days.” Most of the work was done in T-Bone’s home along with the help of Roseanne Cash, the eldest daughter of the late Johnny Cash.

Her music has become more than a prop for the show. Songs written for the program, such as “Church in Ruins,” sung during the season’s sixth episode, is also the episode’s title.

The makeup department for True Detective works with Lera Lynn so her on-screen persona is as dirty and miserable as all the show’s other characters. “You can’t see it, but they did give me track marks for every shoot,” she explains. “Makeup, dark circles, yellow teeth, cracked lips. They put oil in my hair. The whole nine yards.”

For a less True Detective-y sounding example of Lera Lynn’s work, check out the song “Out to Sea” below - the first track of her 2014 album The Avenues.