Kyla La Grange is a woman who defies convention.

Strikingly beautiful, her songs are full of heartbreak and anger. And despite universal acclaim for her stunning debut album, she admits she’d just rather be alone writing, or at home in the company of her two dogs.

“It’s a running joke between my friends that the only time they get a phone call from me is when I’m walking the dogs,” she smiles.

Certainly, she admits, German shepherd Cola and mongrel Flea get the best of her – allowing this startling singer-songwriter to relax away from the pressures of stage and studio.

It has been quite a year for the self-deprecating Cambridge University philosophy graduate.

Her spine-tingling album Ashes received a rapturous response and has been hailed as one of the year’s best, and she was among the leading lights on Damon Albarn’s star- studded Africa Express tour, playing alongside Bassekou Kouyaté, Carl Barat, Nick Zinner, Richard Russell, Baba Maal and Temper Trap.

Yet, while she admits the experience was “amazing” and “probably one of the best things I've ever done or been a part of,” she shies away from the more glamorous trappings of the music industry, shrugging it all off with the endearing insouciance of a girl who’d rather be somewhere... anywhere... else.

“It’s frantic,” she says. “I’ve been flying around between rehearsals, gigs, video shoots and interviews. And it’s only going to get worse.”

So how would she describe her music?

“Oh, I’m terrible at doing that,” she says. “There are a huge jumble of influences but at the core is folk and rock music, and there are loads of big harmonies and choruses to grab hold of.

“It’s sad and angry and not particularly cheerful. And that’s about as close as I’ve ever got to nailing it: I leave the rest to other people to work out!”

There is, she insists, little cheer there. “I only write songs about emotional things that have happened to me, which are trivial in the grand scheme of life.

“There are big moments and pin-drop moments, and I perform with a band too. “We are all good friends and that chemistry shines through in the songs. We are like a family.”

Ashes is a heartfelt account of five years of heartbreak dating back to her student days.

“It was a record of how exactly I felt at the time,” she says quietly.

“And it was a relief to get it out. I spent so many years labouring on it I was bored of hearing the songs by the end,” she goes on.

“I’m really proud of it, it’s just that by the end I had listened to those recordings so many times that they stopped having an effect on me. I’m looking forward to being able to play it back to myself sometime in the future. At the moment I’ve been spending a lot of time writing new songs. It feels good to be starting something different.”

“The fans have been really lovely, though. It’s been wonderful to read and hear all their comments. Though, to be honest, as much as it’s nice to hear that people like my music, I make it for myself first and foremost, so it was most important to me that I was happy.

“As soon as you start worrying too much about what other people think then you stop being able to make good music. Well, I do anyway.”

Has she always, I wondered, wanted to be a musician? Was she the kind of ambitious attention-seeker who performed in front of the mirror as a kid?

“Well I used to sing into my hairbrush but I didn’t have a dream-like ambition to be a musician,” she says thoughtfully.

“It was just one of those things I liked. I only started thinking about it after university — where I did open mic and acoustic nights.”

So, with work already under way on the new album, might we finally get to hear a happier, more upbeat Kyla La Grange? “I don’t think I’ll ever be a happy person as my brain is not wired in a happy way,” she says, her chirpy chat at odds with her professions of gloom.

“But now I’m on one level. I was much more up and down at the time of Ashes.”

And, as she leaves to get her train back home to her childhood home in suburban Hertfordshire, she admits she can’t wait to get back to the quiet life she loves. “For me it’s always about the writing,” she confesses.

“I don’t like playing live that much and I don’t always feel that comfortable on stage. Recording in studios is fun but it’s not my calling.

“For me it’s always about the writing – and if music didn’t work out as a career, at least I’d still have that. Or I could do something more worthwhile with my life than writing miserable little songs.”

* Kyla La Grange plays the O2 Academy tomorrow (Friday, October 5), at 7pm
* Support comes from Glass Animals
* Tickets £7 from ticketweb.co.uk