KIN' is basically a kind of rite of passage, scars-and-all celebration of going through difficult things in your life and being better for it.

My dad's a physicist and had a key to the St Andrew's observatory, and we used to pop down to see Halley's Comet and Saturn and meteor showers.

British music lovers in general are dreadfully concerned about being cool, but I'm quite happy to grab uncool by the horns at any opportunity.

I really liked writing rhyming poems and plays.

You know, we were outdoorsy types, my folks, and one of the first tapes I got, a friend gave me a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald singing with the Count Basie orchestra. And it was the first time, really, that someone's voice had really spoken to me, and it was just so pure.

I can do the vocal acrobatics but I really try not to. I've always been drawn to singers who sing it like it is, pure, straight down the line: Ella Fitzgerald, Patti Smith, Carole King. Simplicity is really important to me.

The only thing I know about being Asian is that my hair is black and my eyelashes are straight and I have strange eyebrows.

If your parents only listen to jazz or folk, you're like one of those trees you see in botanic gardens that have wire frames on them - you grow into that shape, you follow it or you have to break away from it. But I didn't have influences to embrace or kick against - I also had no idea what anything was.

I've always had a tendency to keep an emergency exit in a song. I can't remember ever writing a song that is completely and thoroughly depressing; there's always been a way out somehow. A sense of hope in song, regardless of the subject matter.

Touring is such a major sacrifice, especially as you get older, to be away from friends and family and home and any sort of routine or home comforts.

Don't let your parents telling you that you shouldn't do something stop you from doing it.

I'm not really that comfortable, to be honest, singing about my darkest moments.

Use Creme de la Mer balm when your skin gets dry on a plane. You can put it on your cheeks to give your face a bit of a glow after you land.

For me, success is being happy. I used to think it was lots of houses, lots of record sales, lots of stories to tell. But some massive life changes, getting a divorce and my dad dying, led to a huge period of reflection.

I'm a serial monogamist - I tend to dive in.

I get so frustrated with all these so-called singer-songwriters coming out and they don't write!

Touring can get really hard if you're not hitting some fashionable zeitgeist.

I joined a drama group when I was eight. It was the first time I'd made the connection with an audience.

I didn't find fame particularly difficult, partly because I'm proud to be able to say I'm the most unrecognisable face in pop.

In Scotland, Dad grew courgettes which were the size of my leg. I'd step into the garden and it was like 'The Day of the Triffids.'

I'm a huge fan of The Chemical Brothers and the Ninja Tune label and a lot of the stuff that they put out like DJ Shadow but I think, out of all of them, Leftism really just excited my musical brain in terms of the way that they mixed real instruments with dance tracks.

I think it was Dad who gave me my nickname 'Katy Custard,' recognising my deep, positive and lasting relationship with it.

When I was seventeen, I left Scotland to go to Kent, a well-to-do boarding school in Connecticut, where there was a contingent of really naughty kids.

I would never pigeon hole myself stylistically because I just don't know what I am going to want to do next.