Last week’s announcement of the 2013 Mercury Music Prize nominees brought back happy memories for Kathryn Williams.

“I get very excited for everyone when they find they have been nominated,” she says, while on the road to a show in Leicester.

“When Little Black Numbers was nominated [in 2000] it was massive. I was on my own label selling CDs from my bedroom and the next minute I was in a hotel in Park Lane sitting next to Coldplay performing to people. I thought, ‘I should be waitressing...’”

The nomination saw Williams signed to the major label East West/Atlantic but she is first to admit she wasn’t ready.

“I had bad stage fright and panic attacks,” she says. “I felt like I didn’t deserve it. I messed up a lot of chances that I could have cashed in on.”

With Crown Electric – her tenth studio album, and seventh solo – she feels she is turning a corner. The same day as the Mercury nominations were announced she found out new single Heart Shaped Stone had been playlisted on BBC Radio 2.

“It feels like a new beginning,” she says.

The album released on her own Caw label follows a series of collaborations – with Crown Electric producer Neil MacColl, alongside Anna Spencer in children’s pop group The Crayonettes and most recently as part of the band The Pond.

“I thought being in a band would be a very democratic process with all the ideas being put in a pot.

“I did miss the single vision that I can have with my own stuff.”

She was steadily writing her own songs all this time – with the help of songwriting workshops organised by Firle-based former Squeeze songwriter Chris Difford. “I’d got 60 songs which were melted down to 20 for the record. It was lovely having a break from my own stuff because it meant I could compile this vast amount.”

Crown Electric covers some very personal themes, including the ticking of time on Count and the strange vagaries of fame in Gave It Away, where she namechecks Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston.

“They were all considered the most successful artists and highest grossing artists that people would aspire to be,” she says.

“Yet they all had really tragic demises with nobody around them who cared enough to help them. They were all addicted to things, with everyone around them on the pay roll.”

The passing of time is a regular theme in her work – in Count she sings, “I’ve got to make these hours count”.

“It’s very much at the forefront of my mind,” she says. “I’m often thinking about the limitations of time and of life.”

She has certainly taken on a lot around the release of this album. As well as touring Crown Electric, she is penning songs for a project based around Sylvia Plath’s classic novel The Bell Jar, working on a jazz record with a vibraphone player, and developing a show with the Barbican’s Kate St John based around the overlooked women in history.

“I keep trying to throw mud at the wall and see if it sticks,” she laughs.

The history project is already receiving interest from the Sydney Opera House and Brighton Dome.

“It’s really interesting because you have to do quite deep research,” she says.

“I’ve written a song about Hedy Lamarr, who was in the film Samson And Delilah, and did the first full frontal nude scene in mainstream film.”

She also invented wireless communication which we all use now, creating a formula for submarines which is now used for mobile phones.

“It’s so amazing – but she’s known just for being a beautiful woman.”

Support from Alex Cornish.