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“Every time I was around a piano since I was a small tot, I would plink out notes and try to create my own melodies,” recalls 24-year-old singer-songwriter Lindsay Rae Spurlock. Fact is, the Lafayette native comes from good piano-playing stock. Raised by her radio company dad, she is related to both “The Killer” Jerry Lee Lewis and country legend Mickey Gilley. But where they used pianos to set teenage hormones on fire and grab status quo by the collar, Spurlock turns those 88 keys inward. Songs from her Life’s Puzzle Pieces album all contain a similar wintry feeling, more nostalgic and resigned than despondent, but still a little too cold for complete comfort all the same.

“I write about things I can’t understand, things I want to change,” Spurlock says. “Writing songs is a way to figure out answers. Not necessarily to the situation but more for inner realization.”

Spurlock utilizes somnolent orchestral flourishes and percussion sparingly, but they never bore. Her alternately welcoming piano and vaguely foreign atmospherics are tethered always to her sweet, breathy vocals, like bare feet on a cold wood floor. “Mother” sees Spurlock lining up her own estranged mom in the cross-hairs and asking her questions hard, heavy and carried unanswered for far too long. Listening to “November,” one imagines Spurlock in her wrinkled night-before clothes and smudged mascara, throwing herself around an empty house—empty of her love, empty of her innocence, empty of everything that doesn’t hurt. Maybe she just needs a boost, or a sunny day.

Spurlock now splits time between Atlanta, where she records, and Baton Rouge, where she returns often to visit family, friends and to play solo shows.

Life’s Puzzle Pieces is available now at cdbaby.com. Visit myspace.com/lindsayraespurlock for tour dates and more.