"If Hans Christian Anderson could've had his way with me then none of this s*** would've ever gone down" sings Regina Spektor on Prisoners.

The track, is one of the many highlights of the "greatest hits" compilation Mary Ann Meets The Gravediggers, which stands out in any modern record store thanks to its gothic, Gorey-esque illustrations.

In doing so, she offers up the most plausible explanation so far for her fascinatingly kooky songs - inverted fairytales full of curious characters played out to sparse, clunking piano chords and jazzy, DIY percussion.

A 26-year-old, classically-trained pianist who now plays on a bright red baby grand and thwacks at its stool with a cane, Spektor has, with four albums and a little help from The Strokes (who she supported at Alexandra Palace), transformed herself into the high priestess of anti-folk.

Born in Russia to a Jewish family, Spektor moved with them to New York in 1989. They left the piano behind, so she practiced her fingering on the windowsills.

Come university, she had begun to unite her piano playing with a parallel talent for telling strange, misty-eyed stories which were also startlingly contemporary.

So she recorded an album, 11:11, with the help of a student engineer and a jazz major.

"We would just start playing," she says.

"I was obsessed with everything being captured live, just really wanting everything to be real. When it was done, I emptied out and closed my bank account and sent the money to a company in Canada and got 1000 CDs back. Later on, I learned to be okay with letting machines into my work. I love them now."

Seven years later and Spektor's fourth album proper, Begin To Hope, is simply using bigger sounds to achieve the same effect, her voice contorting, distorting and engulfing as she sketches her unique character portraits.

"I love people and their quirks," she says. "It's really fun. I can just make stuff up.

People are so kind and good to give me an hour of their lives so I can just rant and rave."

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