“The dark is finally upon us—the winter dark,” Charlotte Dos Santos observes from her home in Oslo, Norway. The contrast is strange: In a city consumed by an eerie seasonal blackness, the singer/composer is promoting new music beaming with color. “Harvest Time,” the first sample off the Brazilian-Norwegian artist’s second EP, is a glorious web of jazz piano, ominous string rumble, percussive clatter and sweeping vocals that blend her soulful phrasings with a more classical technique. She worked on the cathartic piece at the beginning of 2019—wiping the slate clean of a “turbulent relationship” and channeling her angst into lyrics about “killing the ego.” “It ended a chapter and started something new,” she says. “‘Harvest Time’ is sort of like the beginning of the end.” And the song represents more than an emotional breakthrough: Dos Santos, who studied for three years at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music, also experienced a musical transition on the EP, shifting from the sample/beat-based production of her 2017 debut, Cleo, to a more expansive sound that reflects the breadth of her training. “I did my Bachelor’s in Professional Music, doing a lot of arranging, composing, production and contemporary writing, which includes writing for small ensembles, jazz ensembles and vocal choirs,” she says. “I like mixing the electronic and the organic.” That melding of styles—programmed sounds and MIDI instruments that brush up against live strings and keys—wound up becoming the project’s foundation. “I just wanted to free myself and fully be the arranger and producer,” she says. “With samples, you are restricted. Cleo means so much to me, but I felt like, ‘This is an introduction, and other works will come later. I can show people what I do and how I feel.’’’ She’s not sure all her fans will be onboard: “Cleo was very warmly accepted by a lot of people,” she says. “A grandma can love it and a 13 year old can love it. It’s very easily digestible and soft. I think this one might be a little different.” But the risk was worth it. “I like when songs really slowly develop or crescendo,” she says, pointing to “Harvest Time.” And, like that slow-building track, Dos Santos is climbing upward.