Nina Nastasia is a singer-songwriter from Los Angeles, now resident in New York.

She first came to prominence in the UK seven years ago with her album Dogs, which was a favourite of Radio 1 DJ John Peel.

Four more albums have followed, the most recent of which, You Follow Me, was jointy credited to drummer Jim White. She's currently in talks with the electronic band Underworld about a possible collaboration.

Nina performs at the Brudenell Social Club on Monday, August 4. Tickets are available in advance from Jumbo and Crash Records.

I read you didn't begin writing songs until you were 25 years old. What got you started then?

I had a hectic job in a restaurant uptown and didn't socialise all that much. Not dire straits or anything, but I ended up spending a lot of time alone. I had bought a cheap guitar in Seattle maybe a year before, and I taught myself to play, partly making it up and partly from one of those little books with the dots. So, a bit of loneliness, a bit of boredom got me started. That's it, really.

It's often noted that your songs are very intimate. Do you find it easiest to write from personal experience?

In the beginning there were purely personal songs and purely fictitious songs. The former would be me singing about something that was difficult or interesting for me and the latter was more about just making up an interesting story. Now it's all mixed up.

You've been uncomfortable with comparisons to other singer-songwriters like Cat Power and PJ Harvey. Is part of that not wishing to be pigeonholed? Are your inspirations as much writers as other musicians?

I'm uncomfortable when people do it in front of me and expect a response, because I'm generally not familiar the music of the person they are comparing me to. It embarrasses me, because I know those people are often more popular than I am. I just do not follow music. I've never been much of a librarian.

As far as inspiration, I think some people are kind of having a conversation with the people or the trends that inspire them when they write. They're very conscious of it. For some it even helps the listener to be familiar with their influences – for some it's better not to. But though I can't claim to be any more original than most, I'm not conscious of who inspires me, really. Here and there, but not really. It's more about stories and thoughts in general.

All of your albums to date have been produced by Steve Albini. Do you find that he intuitively understands how to get the best out of your material? Could you ever imagine working with another producer?

He understands how to leave it alone, which can be a difficult job for some people. He's not a producer, though. He's an engineer. A producer has more of a hand in the music, I think. Steve just records it and does a great job, I think. Kennan (Gudjonsson, her pianist] and I are more the producers.

On your last album, You Follow Me, you shared double-billing with Jim White. Was there more of a collaborative approach to it than previous records? What did you learn from the experience and is it the sort of thing you'd do again?

Yes and no. I wrote the songs the same way I always do, but imagining Jim as the orchestra. I gave him little recordings of the songs, and he had a listen and thought of the way he'd like to approach them. Kennan and I talked about it, too. Then we rehearsed together, with Kennan mostly making suggestions about certain places where certain kinds of things would work. And Jim played the things he had come up with, too, and would improvise a lot as well.

We recorded some of those rehearsals, then Kennan would go home and write charts of where specific parts could go. Then we spent more time on the songs, and we talked a lot more about it, and just played 'til it sounded right to us all. In a lot of ways Jim collaborated the way he would on other records with me. The main difference here, I think, was that he had a real plan for a lot of the songs, a real concept, where on the other records it was more improvised and directed by me and Kennan.

Whatever I learned was indirect, something that would probably be made clear the next time, if there is a next time. And, well, I wouldn't not do it again.

You Follow Me is available on Fat Cat Records.

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