Just six months after her first gig here at Mosaic in March, Spanish indie singer-songwriter Russian Red will be back for another gig.

Less well-known, perhaps, than her fellow female folk contemporaries like Feist and Joanna Newsom, she managed to impress the Mosaic crowd with her stripped-down acoustic trio set-up, and was in turn smitten by the warm welcome here.

"Singapore is not a big place and it's really far from my home, but having most people singing along to the songs was really overwhelming," the singer, whose real name is Lourdes Hernandez, told LOUD over the phone from Madrid last week, her inherent Spanish accent peaking slightly above her fluent English.

The 26-year-old brings her brand of quirky, lazy-afternoon indie pop to MTV Sessions this week. The concert will air over MTV SEA (StarHub Ch 533) at noon on Oct 20.

Hernandez got her start on social media site MySpace, where demos she recorded with friend Brian Hunt had Spanish media buzzing, before her songs were picked up by indie websites everywhere else. Her debut album, I Love Your Glasses, was released in 2008.

Her Scottish heroes

Even the audience members who weren't familiar with Hernandez's own work at Mosaic must have noticed the dreamy folk similarities she shares with Scottish indie pop band Belle & Sebastian, who played on her latest album Fuerteventura, released last year.

Hernandez had her producer Tony Doogan, a longtime producer for Belle & Sebastian, to thank for the link-up.

When Hernandez met her indie heroes in the studio, she was so nervous she thought she wouldn't get any work done.

"My biggest fear was not to be relaxed because I'm a fan, so it's difficult. But it just took a couple of days to adapt and get used to the fact that they were there," she said.

"They are really normal people and amazing musicians."

Earlier this month, they met up again to play at the Kutxa Kultur Festival 2012 in San Sebastian, Spain.

"They live in Glasgow, they have their different solo projects so we don't really get the chance to hang that much. But it's good to know that I can call them," she said.

Most of the time, though, Hernandez takes along musician friend Hunt and another friend. And she prefers the power of three to a full band.

"When a trio work well and they know how to play their instruments separately, it can be much more powerful for the audience," she said. "It concentrates their attention.

"It's a few people making something bigger possible."

She's already been experimenting with a new sound for her next album, which she says will be more electric guitar-based rather than the acoustic folkiness of her previous two records.

"I'm going into a new direction because I'm playing much more with my electric guitar," she said.

"I always look for a way of changing everything again so I don't become comfortable, so that I can get better at it. It makes me feel really small at the time, but there's a freshness there."

When asked what it might sound like, Hernandez laughed and said: "I like to say, and this is a bit pretentious, but I like to say it sounds like it's between (Scottish alt-rock band) The Cocteau Twins and (Swedish pop-rock duo) Roxette."

These somewhat unlikely reference points may seem like a complete shift for Hernandez, but she says that there will still be many similarities to her earlier work.

The new album is about 80 per cent written, and Hernandez has recorded half the songs she plans to put out.

It will likely be released next September, the month, she said, when "the real year starts".

Explained Hernandez: "It's after summer. That's when people get back to work and have new ideas."

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