Fearless. That was the word that kept coming up when Australian singer/songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke was dreaming up her sophomore record (and US debut) Curiouser. Fun was another one. The fact that she dared to dream either while her 2007 Australian debut Little Eve was still ringing loud and clear suggests a couple more F-words. Forward. And Fast.

She had a tough act to follow. After a trilogy of EPs in her home country from ’04 to ’06 – “Telegram”, “Comikaze” and “Circular Breathing” – Little Eve burst onto the scene to land in the upper reaches of the ARIA charts and earned the singer a host of accolades. The album went Gold and clocked up four ARIA nominations.

“We had no songs,” she says. “What we had was a huge burst of inspiration. We went into this album with a vision. We mapped out how we wanted it to sound; the aesthetic, the spirit of it. Experimental, hooky, unashamedly pop... we wanted to exploit everything that's unique about my music. "We" includes Kate’s partner in life and music, husband/guitarist/collaborator Keir Nuttall.

Radiating a newfound sense of mutual certainty, Curiouser immediately struck a chord with fans and critics when it was released in Australia in October 2008. In addition to a swag of glowing reviews, the album earned itself another F-word: the First album of Miller-Heidke’s to be certified Platinum, go to 1 on the ARIA charts and 1 on the iTunes chart. Curiouser dominated the Top 10 on the iTunes album chart for two months and spent two weeks at 1. The record also received multiple nominations at the 2009 ARIA awards. The US version of Curiouser includes two bonus tracks which are crowd favorites: “Words”, which was the 2007 ARIA nominated Breakthrough Single from her Australian debut record Little Eve; and the viral smash "Are You F*king Kidding Me (Facebook Song)", which has had the Twitterati buzzing since it first appeared on YouTube.

Ultimately, it’s the wonderfully unselfconscious yet accomplished songwriting that takes both Curiouser and Miller-Heidke to the next level. Remarkably, it’s also the first time she’s opened herself up to co-writing – here, working closely with Nuttall – and the results are inspiring.

"Songwriting was always too personal and I felt too self-conscious to collaborate," Kate says. "But after a certain point, I just lost my inhibitions. We got into a groove where we bring out the best of each other. These songs are better than anything we'd written individually before."

Recording with Los Angeles producer Mickey Petralia (Beck, Peaches, eels, Dandy Warhols), who had the right mix of humour, enthusiasm and weird old electronic stuff to offer the new tunes, Miller-Heidke, Nuttall, bassist Ben McCarthy and drummer Steve Pope spent two months crafting Curiouser. With his strict 4pm to 4am shifts (with no days off), Petralia's studio wizardry turned out to be the perfect galvanising force for Miller-Heidke’s and and Nuttall’s carefully detailed home demos.

She’s all the things you want: sultry, smart, idiosyncratic, vulnerable… and possessing the virtues of a classically trained musician.