Kate Nash is tired. It's 9 p.m. and she's on her first major U.S. tour, knitting a scarf in her hotel room in Atlanta and occasionally yawning. And for good reason — it's been a busy couple of years. The 20 year-old English singer-songwriter wrote her first song and played her first live gig two years ago, then went from a spot in Lily Allen's Myspace Top 8 to the top of the English charts with her debut album, Made of Bricks.

Nash's songs could be compared superficially to Allen's, as they both sing with a sharp wit and a pronounced British accent, but Nash's music is a little more indie rock. You could also say she's a less weird, more English Regina Spektor. "Foundations", her hit in America, have a lot of British slang, words like "fit" for attractive and "trainers" for tennis shoes. That Britishness worried Nash before her U.S. tour.

"People made such big deals of me doing gigs, they were kind of like 'Oh my God, you’re so English, people aren’t going to understand what you’re talking about,'" Nash said. "I got asked that so many times before I went to America, I was freaked out, and then when I get there everybody’s really welcoming and nice and encouraging."

As for the return of the British accent in British music, Nash attributes it to pride.

"British kind of popular culture is becoming cooler again, people are being themselves."

And she uses it well: the slang, accent, and her strong voice combine to make her a lot of fun to listen to. The songs, which she wrote alone or with producer Paul Epworth, help too — they're sometimes piano-driven, sometimes lushly orchestrated, and very catchy.

Nash has been on both receiving ends of the notoriously fickle and sensationalist English music press, with her album getting an 8/10 rating from NME and 4/5 from All Music Guide, but also being the butt of a parody song, blurbs in gossip mags, and having "Made of Bricks" listed one of the worst albums of the year by another paper.

"It’s sad isn’t it," she mused. "I think the English press are really brutal. I also think that English culture is kind of gross celebrity-obsessed, like a gossip-obsessed culture, which I think is really disgusting. But it’s mental, people go nuts for it, so people have to fill papers."

Aside from music, Nash is also a busy writer. She writes "My Ignorant Youth", a little magazine she hands out at shows, and she's working on more.

"There is talk of doing something like a book, that’d be quite nice for an end-of-album campaign," she said. "Like scores, collages, poetry, artwork, photographs, and stuff." A tour diary? "Something like that, but I must say I want to do something like a collection of short stories." As for what she writes about, she said "anything, really" and softly listed off a few things, including turtles, nails, matchbooks, curtains, and mudslides.

Nash is writing songs for the next album, but after the tour, which will be followed by festivals in the U.S. and Europe, she wants to relax. "I want to buy a house. I want to buy a house and get a studio in it and just do demos and live normally in it for a little while."

Kate Nash plays at the 9:30 Club tonight with openers The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. It's sold out, but there are some tickets on Craigslist.

Photo of Kate Nash and Billy Bragg by mrmatt, used under a Creative Commons license