“Dirt Femme is about me and my relationship with my femininity,” Tove Lo said of the album in a press release. “When I started out as a writer and an artist, I used to view my feminine traits as weaker and would enhance my masculine traits to get ahead in life. I feel a big energy shift in my environment since then and this album reflects the various ways my feminine side has both helped and hurt me. I'm a pansexual woman married to a straight man. I believe masculine and feminine lives on a spectrum in all humans. There are so many more interesting nuances than most people want to accept. Songs on this album will contradict each other, will probably upset some of you, will make you want to dance, cry, fuck, and drive your car really, really, fast. It's extremely personal as always which is why it's so hard to describe in just a few words. It's all my feelings, thoughts and questions put together in under 50 minutes with no answers. But I know that I always feel relief and connection when a song just speaks to my emotions without telling me what to do about them. I hope this album reaches that little secret pocket in your heart where all the real stuff is hiding.”

Crafting an idiosyncratic blend of pop influenced as much by '80s pop as by contemporary EDM and coupled with raw, brutally honest lyrics, Tove Lo made a name for herself as an award-winning performer and Grammy-nominated songwriter. She began writing poetry and short stories at a young age. She went on to study at the famous Rytmus Musikergymnasiet, a music-oriented high school comparable to the U.K.'s BRIT School, where she befriended the future members of Icona Pop. After singing in the band Tremblebee, made up of students from the school, and a spell playing one-man-and-his-dog nightclub gigs as frontwoman of a math rock band, she decided to focus on her own songs, spending six months in her shed studio working on a demo. "Habits (Stay High)", peaked at number 3 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. In addition to her solo work, Lo has co-written a number of songs for other singers, including Lorde's "Homemade Dynamite" and Ellie Goulding's "Love Me like You Do"