Best Coast Make 'Beautiful' Album with Jon Brion, Design Urban Outfitters Clothing Line

Growing up in the age of the internet can be quite terrifying, as Best Coast frontwoman Bethany Cosentino can attest. Having spent the early part of her twenties in the indie limelight penning songs about boys, cats and, well, more boys and cats, Cosentino quickly became aware of herself, as a musician and a woman, and knew what she wanted to change.

"You can see how different you look, how different you talk -- you can literally and physically see and hear the changes," Cosentino tells Spinner, of watching herself in the media throughout the past few years. "That puts you in a different position than most people.

"It's like your daily life is being documented so it's hard not to be like, 'Oh wait, I want to change that,' if you see something you don't really like."

Musically, though, Cosentino has learned to do the opposite and stopped paying attention to what others have to say, adding that she was "very critical on myself in the early stages of this band -- always feeling like I needed to please critics and fans. I finally learned that it doesn't really matter what other people think about me, it's more about pleasing myself and making sure that the art I'm creating makes me happy."

When it came time to write and record their latest full-length, The Only Place – a follow-up to 2010's surf rock-meets-'50s girl group debut Crazy for You -- what made Cosentino and bandmate Bobb Bruno happiest was working with a legendary producer they've always looked up to -- Jon Brion (Fiona Apple, Kanye West). Cosentino and Bruno knew that he could help them deliver precisely what Best Coast wanted, a simply beautiful sounding record.

"I wanted this record to be beautiful," explains Cosentino. "I wanted even the fast, upbeat punk songs to have a sense of beauty to them and I knew Jon could do that. With him, we wouldn't make Crazy for You part two, we would grow up a bit and make something different yet not completely neglecting the sound we had in album number one."

The Only Place achieves that beauty, smoothing out the rough reverb-laden melodies the band had become known for and, more importantly, for the first time fans get to hear Cosentino's voice loud and clear -- a confidence that she admits took some time to develop.

"It's hard not to gain confidence when you're singing every single night for two years in front of people," says Cosentino. "I knew that I wanted that confidence to shine through on this record and I didn't want to hide behind the curtain of reverb and distortion that I hid behind on Crazy for You, so I upped the ante and just sang my ass off."

Cosentino is hopeful that fans of the first record will stick around for this new batch of songs, but won't be too fazed if she loses some along the way.

"I hope we gain new fans with this album but to those that we lose, it's okay... life goes on," she says.

In addition to promoting The Only Place, Cosentino will also be branching off into the world of fashion. The singer-songwriter, who briefly attended fashion school, recently designed a clothing line for Urban Outfitters and was glad that she finally got a chance to put those short-lived fashion skills to use.

"It was difficult because I was really busy when I was working on these designs, but I knew, in the end it would pay off," says Cosentino. "It's just really incredible to hold in your hand a piece of clothing that you designed in your bedroom. It's going to completely trip me out when I see a girl wearing one of the designs for the first time -- I can't wait for that feeling."