asks Bic Runga as the tape recorder is about to be switched off. Earlier we had being talking about the title of her third album Birds and, quite innocently, it had occurred to me that it might in certain quarters be misconstrued as being the slightly pejorative term for a female.

Apparently I was not the only one. ?It means girls doesn't it?" she says. ?I like the word birds even for girls. I don't mind being referred to as being a good bird. It's the highest compliment because it means you're a dude! I don't think it's derogatory, not that it ever was really. I've heard people say you should change the name of the album in the UK and Ireland and I'm like, who cares if they can't take a jokef" Runga admits to not really liking real birds and that one of the reasons for calling the album is that her overall vision was for a really dark, moody collection of songs. The artwork is a collection of photographs of stuffed native Kiwi birds, their spirits having left their lifeless bodies.

?I kind of wanted the album to be a downer, " she chuckles. ?It's not especially pop-tastic. I wanted it to be like a pain killer, like a valium, something warm and easy to live withf I often use the word miserablist to describe it."

She talks about the influence of her childhood record collection and that of her sister in particular. Bands like Mazzy Star, the Red House Painters and the shoe-gazer phenomenon. ?I love all that stuff. A lot of those bands were top 10 in my country.

They weren't fringe at all, they were actually the real deal. The Flying Nun record label was huge in the 1980s. That was our big indie label. All that shoe-gazing stuff came from the cold part of the country. Mazzy Star is the perfect example of a pain killer."

Runga's image . . . and fanbase . . . has thus far arguably been more KT Tunstall than Kim Deal so it is possible that Birds is more about the artist having the confidence to take a few commercial risks to make a record closer to what really moves her. The fact that her father, ethnically a Maori, died last year may also have something to do with it but, apart from talking about the event from a cultural perspective, it is not something we discussed in relation to the content of the album's lyrics. It would have felt like an intrusion.

?Have you heard the new My Morning Jacket record? I absolutely fell in love with that song 'It Beats For You'. I just wanted the whole album to be that feeling. I can't really describe it. I like albums that see that misery all the way through to the end. Birds is never wimpy or self-pitying. It just has a sadness. It is dark but it's hopeful."

The album has been available in her home country for over six months and has gone four times platinum already. Runga is now easily the largest selling artist in New Zealand's history.

A lack of confidence in the new, more depressing, tone of her work means the Kiwi release has all the radio friendly songs up top and the moody stuff at the end. It's as if someone wanted you to think this was a nice light-hearted Bic Runga record before you got turned off by all the moody songs. The 30-year-old regrets this and has changed the track listing for the worldwide launch.

?We kind of chickened out by putting the singles at the start which you shouldn't really do. Now they are all in the middle and it unravels better. I wanted to make an album with one prevailing feeling and to do that we tried to keep things simpler. There always seems to be trends in music. Even with food there was a trend for fusion. I just wanted to present the songs and not make it about the production. The arrangements are quite straight. We used that word a lot during the recording . . . but not in a bad way."

Even so, large arrangements still adorn the album, which was recorded live in a spooky stately home in Auckland. Runga took over production duties ?just because there is a shortage of them in New Zealand". Wouldn't Neil Finn have been the obvious choice to do it? ?Neil is an exceptional producer but he just wanted to play piano. He didn't want the burden of seeing it right through to the next stage."

She also knew exactly how she wanted it to sound. ?I did have one vision right from the start and I didn't want to deviate from that."

Talking about track listings with artists is always very revealing. ?Yeah we're so neurotic, " she says. Runga has lived in Paris and New York over the past few years but returned home to New Zealand to record Birds with former Crowded House man Finn. I wonder is it suffocating being such a big star in New Zealand. ?The people in New Zealand are cool. They are like the Irish. I do walk down the street in Auckland. It's not a big deal. They usually just say hi."

Briolette Kah Bic Runga was born in New Zealand to a Maori soldier and ethnic Chinese Malaysian singer. It made for a pretty eclectic musical upbringing. ?My mum still has a sister in Malaysia. Because I'm such a mish-mash of cultures I found my identity in my family and in my music so I feel very solitary and unique. I don't really subscribe to any one thing. . ."

What was it like being raised half-Maori?

The image of the culture had not always been positive. ?It's wild, " she says with excitement. ?A lot of the culture including the language has been lost but now is a great time to be Maori. In a very short time people have gone from not being proud about it to having great pride. I know a lot of people my age who are fluent in the language and many others who are eager to learn about Polynesian art and philosophy."

One of the positives of her father's death last year was the insight it gave her into indigenous Kiwi culture.

?You learn how to bury the dead, the big stuff you know. The rituals are so important. A Maori funeral can go on for days and days and everyone sleeps in the same room as the body. Isn't it a bit like that in Ireland?"

My knowledge of the Maori could probably be summed up by two things: All Blacks rugby and the movie Once Were Warriors.

?There are different stereotypes now, " she says without making me feel like a cultural half-wit. ?It's very positive. I know lots of Maori lawyers and musicians and important people. It's not all people on welfare and beating up their wives like that movie would have you believe. Even the tattoo art, I mean Robbie Williams has one whatever that means but there is a big interest in the whole culture behind that.

There are still a lot of social problems but it's a lot better."

Musically there is a big hip-hop culture among the ethnic minorities of New Zealand.

On the Chinese side, her mum, a lounge singer in Malaysia before she was born, stoked her imagination with colourful stories of ?men behaving badly, opium and that kind of thing , , the seedy underbelly of playing in clubs in Malaysia."