KT Tunstall

Musician:

Kate "KT" Tunstall

Album:

Eye To The TelescopeIn Stores Now

You'll Like Her If You Like:

Fiona Apple, Beth Orton, PJ Harvey, Joss Stone

Six Things You Should Know About KT Tunstall:

1. KT got her nickname by putting together her initials. "It's got a bit more attitude than 'Kate,' which just says farmer's daughter to me," she says.

2. This Scottish lassie grew up in the university town of St. Andrew's knowing that she was adopted. "I grew up knowing I could have had a million different lives," KT says. "It makes your life mysterious and your imagination go wild."

3. Her album's title, Eye to the Telescope, is partially a nod to her childhood love of space and science fiction. "My dad is a physicist and he used to take my brothers and I into his lab when we were little," KT says. "We played games with liquid nitrogen and Van de Graaff generators. He had the keys to the observatory at St Andrew's University and he'd get us up in the middle of the night to show us Halley's Comet." No wonder why her favorite album is David Bowie's Hunky Dory: "Its sound really touched my love for songwriting and spacey stuff," she says.

4. KT got some big guns to help with her debut album, including U2 producer, Steve Osborne. Even more extraordinary than who she worked on the album with was where they worked. "We recorded the album in this gnarly little studio in the woods," she says. "It was this disabled guy's house. The vocal booth was the wheelchair ramp between his bedroom and the control room, so you could either sing going downhill or uphill. It was perfect -- so raw. He's got this little shack in the garden where all the local bands rehearse. It was like Deliverance."