Introducing... K T Tunstall, the part-Scottish, part-Chinese singer-songwriter, who plays Fibbers in York on Thursday.

She calls herself K T rather than Kate - "well, it's got a bit more attitude than Kate, which just says farmer's daughter to me" - and she has been performing since her childhood in St Andrew's. The daughter of a physicist, she took up piano and flute, taught herself to sing from an Ella Fitzgerald tape and switched to guitar at 16. A scholarship to Kent School in Connecticut, New England, and time on a hippy commune, was followed by a drama and music course at Royal Holloway College and assorted band projects. In December she released her debut album, Eye To The Telescope. Charles Hutchinson keeps his eye on her.

You played Fibbers not that long ago, but in different circumstances, didn't you?

"Yeah, I've been there a couple of times. Once in my own right in early November, when I supported Seafood, who arrived late 'cos they were stuck on the motorway and I never saw them till the next gig, and a couple of weeks earlier I'd played in Kevin Cormack's band from Orkney, Half Cousin, when they supported The Earlies. It was amazing just to be a musician in a band for once, playing flute, wah-wah keyboards and clarinet, which I had to learn!

"That was the night that I was also on Jools Holland's Later show - I'd been down to London to record Black Horse & The Cherry Tree - and I remember watching it on a TV at the back of Fibbers."

Black Horse & The Cherry Tree is your new single but wasn't originally on the album. How come?

"We'd actually made the album at the start of last year and then it was just a question of plotting its release, as you want to get it out, play it live and move on to the next one. Psychologically it was important to get it out by the end of the year but it kept being put back, and by the time I did the Jools Holland slot I'd written Black Horse in the summer. So we then printed 10,000 copies of the album with that version from Later, which was the first time we'd done the song.

"I've since done a version with just me and the drummer in Chris Difford's studio in a barn in Kent, and that's what you hear on the new single and on the latest print of the album."

What's the story behind Black Horse & The Cherry Tree?

"It's inspired by old blues, Nashville psycho hillbillies and hazy memories. It tells the story of finding yourself lost on your path, and a choice has to be made. It's about gambling, fate, listening to your heart, and having the strength to fight the darkness that's always willing to carry you off."

In interview, your disposition is sunny, so from where do these thoughts of "fighting the darkness" emerge?

"I do allow that side of life into my music, because if you only concentrate on one side it becomes fantastical. The sort of music I listen to, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, P J Harvey... they're the kings and queens of darkness, though I also enjoy Bowie, Lou Reed, Carole King. And if I didn't have a taste for this music, I'd probably be writing incredibly cheesy music, but songwriters are the lucky ones: when you have a horrible break-up, you get to write about it!"

Explain the album title, Eye To The Telescope?

"I wanted to find a theme for the album, as I love albums that work as a whole rather than just being a bag of songs, so I wanted songs that fitted the image of two people sitting at a kitchen table discussing what's happened. I'm focusing on tiny elements in this cosmos of human experience, and there are connotations of travel too."

No doubt travel will feature prominently in your 2005 diary.

"The rest of the year is just about playing live. The record is done and the job left to do is to go out and play and show the development of those songs. I'm a huge, huge fan of festivals, so that's where it's at for me this summer."

K T Tunstall, Fibbers, York, Thursday, sold out.

Updated: 15:33 Thursday, February 10, 2005