Watch out for Annie Clark: She bites. A 26-year-old who records as St. Vincent, Clark won (and broke) countless blog hearts with 2007’s Marry Me, a Feist-y love letter that hid its claws under pretty red nail polish. Her second album is rowdier and less well-behaved, and thus better, although the template is the same: breathy coos and lush strings intermittently blown apart by distorted guitar blasts. As its title implies, Actor finds Clark playing a variety of roles, mostly damsels in distress—a little girl battling monsters, “a wife in watercolors” about to “wash away.” The twist is she’s actually her own worst enemy, most dangerous when she turns her guns on herself. “Save Me From What I Want” is a willowy ode to self-destruction, and in “Black Rainbow” she watches a bird fight his own reflection in a window. “What’s he gonna win when he wins?” Clark wonders sweetly. She doesn’t answer because she knows there isn’t one.

Download “The Strangers,” “Laughing With a Mouth of Blood,” “The Party”