Now thirty, Pomme takes sole creative control of her music for the first time on her fifth album, after having co-produced her previous records alongside Waxx, Albin de la Simone and Flavien Berger. She remains accompanied on stage and in the studio by the musicians she shares a close creative chemistry with: Michelle Blades, Pauline Denize, Zoé Hochberg and Corentin Ollivier.

The title La Forteresse had lived with her for years, an image that is both protective and confining. The record unfolds in four chapters: childhood, love and trauma, crossing the wall, and finally emerging on the other side, into the present. These are narrated through the lens of a fictional half-human, half-bat creature, taken in by humans long ago and confined for centuries within a fortress, until she decides to break through its walls. Her nature is left deliberately ambiguous, so listeners can project their own experience onto her.

Pomme immersed herself in medieval imagery, illuminated manuscripts and mythology, the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, the musicals of Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand, the live performances of La Horde and Peeping Tom, and the dreamlike cinema of Hayao Miyazaki. Musically, she cites influences as varied as Björk's Vespertine, Sufjan Stevens' Carrie & Lowell, Feist's Pleasure and Kate Bush's Never for Ever — records united by artists fully devoted to ambitious, expansive work that still speaks to everyone.