KT Tunstall on new album KIN: 'I've got my mojo back'

KT Tunstall says she was burnt out and ready to give up music before rediscovering her mojo and recording her sixth studio album.

It is 11 years since the singer burst onto the scene with her debut Eye To The Telescope, which won her a Brit award a year later in 2006.

She married her drummer, Luke Bullen, in 2008 but they divorced five years later, which the Scot, 41, documented in her melancholic 2013 record Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon.

She told the Standard: “I was in an entirely different world. I really loved making that last record.

"It was a really cathartic process. It was a tumultuous time and a big shift in my life. But it also made me take a long hard look at myself and how I wanted to live the rest of my life.

"When I toured the record I had this idea of wearing a Dior suit and playing in lovely theatres. As lovely and emotional as it was, it burned me out. I was at a point where I thought I didn’t want to make records any more.”

She decided to make a change by leaving London to move to Los Angeles and start writing film scores. She added: “I felt stagnant. I felt I needed a drastic change.

"I got accepted into the Sundance Institute and spent two amazing weeks on George Lucas’s ranch learning about writing film scores.

“I found myself riding a bike around the beautiful roads there, and was listening to a lot of Fleetwood Mac and Neil Young, and it all just started seeping into my bones... it was like cutting the umbilical cord.

"I found LA so tranquil and I suppose I got my mojo back.” She began writing and recording her new album, KIN, which is due out next month and features a track with James Bay.

She said of the singer, 25: “I met him while we were both on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. I had read in an interview that he was a fan of mine, which is always flattering, and we got chatting on the show.

"We swapped numbers and he called me a few days later. I had started writing this song that had a real Seventies rock vibe, he happened to be in LA for a day so he came into the studio.

"He is one of the most talented new songwriters we have so it was fantastic to work with him.”