When comedian Mae Martin first moved to Los Angeles, they held a monthly residency at Largo at the Coronet. Martin, star of the biting sobriety comedy “Feel Good” and many stand-up specials, fell in love with the music history that had passed through the club.

“They had the piano that Elliott Smith played, I think, on ‘Baby Britain,’ ” Martin said. “Flanny, who runs Largo, encouraged me to have musical guests, so I started doing Elliott Smith covers. It was such a nice feeling that the comedy audience had the patience for that, when you could hear a pin drop and the energy would shift. Those shows built my confidence in music.”

That work paid off with “I’m a TV,” Martin’s debut album of original songwriting that evokes the millennial indie they grew up on as well as the arty pop of the Largo canon. The LP is pithy in the way that Phoebe Bridgers or Jenny Lewis write one- liners, but it’s an unexpectedly tender songwriter record from one of the sharpest, most self-aware minds in stand-up.

This interview with Martin has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: When did you feel like you were ready to make an album?

A: I always wrote songs, but very privately. I made this show called “Feel Good” in England, and my friend Charles Watson was the composer on it, and I played guitar on one of the songs. It was the first time that I felt empowered to have opinions about music and my taste, particularly the emotionality of music. … One of the guys who produced the album, Jason, I went to summer camp with when we were 13. We used to play acoustic guitars by the campfire, playing Ben Harper and Tragically Hip and Third Eye Blind. I think that comes through, the warmth of the period where I fell in love with music. So much of life doesn’t have a punch line, and in music you can be more confessional because you’re not saying, “Hi, I’m Mae, and I’m saying this about this particular incident in my life.”

Q: You can really hear that Elliott Smith “Figure 8” influence on a few songs like “Garbage Strike.”

A: Oh man, I’m such a deep Elliott Smith fan. I loved his last album, “From a Basement on the Hill,” which was so dark and heavy, and I love Heatmiser. People have these associations of him with this sort of mournful acoustic stuff. But his arrangements are so full, and there’s so much Paul McCartney and George Harrison in there. … But that’s a cool comparison, I love that album so much.

Q: There are songwriters who are very funny, and comedians who have written evocative music. How does wit work differently for you in these different settings?

A: If I have moments of wit, it’s probably referencing a true irony in life. I had to unlearn the muscle memory of taking people to a poignant place and then relieving that tension with a punch line. That’s so ingrained in me, to not bum anyone out. Playing those Largo shows was really like ripping the Band-Aid off, because there’s a temptation to wink at the audience or bail halfway through with a joke, but I had to commit to the entirety of a song.

Q: “Wayward,” your upcoming Netflix series, is set within the troubled- teen industry and explores cult dynamics. Do those themes land differently now than when you started that show?

A: Definitely. I’ve been working on it for years, and a couple of years ago, that topic entered the zeitgeist with the Paris Hilton story. It has a truthful framework about the troubled-teen industry, but it’s also a cult genre thriller … It’s set in 2003, and that’s been interesting thinking about the differences between then and now, the intergenerational conflict and all the critical thinking that you have to suppress as an adult just to participate in these systems.