IN an era when most "next big things" are proclaimed saviours of the music world after a handful of shows and one hastily compiled demo, there is something positively old-fashioned about the rise of Emmy the Great.

After a stint as backing singer with Noah And The Whale came to a premature end, the Hong Kong-born London resident spent three years putting together a set – and a band – of depth and quality.

Along the way she has picked up a loyal following, become a word-of-mouth queen of the festival scene, and recently released her debut album – a lyrical, bittersweet meditation on life, love and everything in between.

Literate without being bookish, gritty without being crude, Emmy provides a welcome alternative to the comic-book stylings of Lily Allen and the stately sheen of Duffy.

Even though

is your first album, you've been performing and recording for some time. Do you already feel like an old hand?

Well, I'm not as hysterical about certain parts of the industry as I would have been a couple of years ago. I have a pretty even view of things, and I don't have the kind of expectations that are bound to be disappointed. Actually, my album was supposed to be out last summer but we missed a deadline and there's this unwritten rule that you can't put an album out between October and January. So the record has been around since last year and one or two of the songs are two or three years old.

Some of your songs, like

or the self-explanatory

, sound painfully autobiographical.

I can't write a song unless it's about me and I can cast every person in the song from my own life. Sometimes I'll write someone a song when I can't tell them something face to face.

Will your ex-boyfriend realise the album is about him?

Well... when we were writing the album I was in the process of breaking up with him, when we were recording it we had broken up and now we're actually back together. So he knows!

That sounds a bit like the Maroon 5 album

.

Maroon 5 are awesome. That's fine by me. I don't feel guilty about my pleasures. A lot of stuff gets taken way too seriously that is just as banal as Maroon 5. At least they just throw it out there and say "We made a killer pop song and we're going to play it into the ground". I love Britney Spears, too. You know, she has a song called E-Mail My Heart. That's my favourite title ever. I want to write an update on that but I don't know what to call it... it would have to be about Facebook, though.

Are musicians likely to affected by the credit crunch?

We put out our own music so we're in an amazing position. People I know tell me "My label won't give me any money" and I say "Welcome to my world". You've just got to learn how to make music for the sake of it. I always say our band are like the cockroaches that survive the apocalypse. We're so close to the ground that nothing affects us.

You've been bundled in with the anti-folk genre. Klaxons once claimed nu-rave didn't exist. Does anti-folk?

I really don't know. In terms of a genre I don't think it's appropriate for me. You look at the hype machine – which consists of blogs and press – and they attach themselves to a phrase because it's easy. Nobody is taking it seriously and then all of a sudden somebody in front of a computer or in a school yard starts to believe it. It might exist, but if it does it's not mine.

The themes you write about – sex, death, religion – certainly seem to draw on the concerns of traditional folk music. Is that a conscious decision?

I guess they do, but then isn't that what all music is about? I used to write about death, then I had a phase about religion and now I write about my boyfriend. In fact, lately I've written a lot about marriage.

Is that another case of trying to tell a certain person something through your writing?

(Laughs) I don't know. I think it's because I'm entering a period of my life where I'm no longer in my early 20s. I no longer see relationships as this big, beautiful thing. It's just an agreement not to be lonely. I'm finding that quite disheartening so I write about it. But I try to write about everything. My friend Ed once asked me to write a song about him (Edward Is Dedward). He's so vain that I thought the most beautiful way of seeing him would be on a plinth, wrapped in velvet in a casket. That's so romantic.

Emmy The Great will headline the Indietracks Festival at Midland Railway near Ripley, July 24-26. For full line-up and ticket details go to www.indietracks.co.uk. Listen to Emmy The Great at www.myspace.com/emmythegreat.