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Hectorine’s Sarah Gagnon calls up the spirit of the ancient Sumerian warrior goddess Inanna to explain the tumult that surrounded the making of Arrow of Love, her third full-length album, out May 23 on Take A Turn Records.

In Mesopotamian myth, the goddess travels to the underworld to learn what there is to know about death and dies there. Though Inanna is rescued and reborn, she is forced to choose someone to take her place, and when she learns her lover Dumuzi has not mourned her, she condemns him.

Hectorine’s latest album tells a lower key tale of death and rebirth, encompassing a period in which Gagnon lost a job and ended a relationship under the shadow of a modern plague and raging wildfires, retreating into enforced solitude until it was possible to emerge again.

Arrow of Love recounts this process in chronological order, from the marimba-clinking opener “Is Love an Illusion” through the whispery desolation of Joan of Arc-themed “No Hallelujah” to the bubbling, resilient joy of the title track, near the end, as life and love reassert their pull.

And yet, though the subject matter is heavy, the music is not. Gagnon’s velvety contralto — if you think she sounds a bit like Christine McVie, you’re not the first — weaves with assurance among trance-like dream pop architectures.

Gagnon has been making music as Hectorine since 2016 and has released two previous studio full-lengths and a live album. For Arrow of Love, she worked with Geoff Saba of East Oakland’s Itinerant Home studio; he co-produced, engineered and mixed the album, while J.J. Golden mastered it.