My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden shines on

The first time Twin Cities fans saw Shara Worden perform, she was in a cheerleader costume pepping up Sufjan Stevens' band on his 2005 "Illinois" tour. The last time was just a week ago, when she laughed it up with the cast of Minnesota Public Radio's comedy show "Wits." Her most high-profile moment came at the end of Rock the Garden 2009, when she belted out Heart's "Crazy on You" with the Decemberists like a woman possessed.

"That was like doing a rap song," the opera-trained singer remembered. "It had to be a full-force thing. You come out of the gate like a racehorse, or it won't work."

All of these lighthearted moments are quite a sharp contrast to Worden's dense, dramatic and often dark work with My Brightest Diamond, the classical-tinged art-rock act that is the vehicle for her own songs. You can hear the juxtaposition right away on the new album "This Is My Hand," which opens with the marching-paced track "Pressure" and such lines as, "I feel the weight of a billion years come down on me."

Returning to town Monday for a My Brightest Diamond concert at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, Worden gave a weighty interview before "Wits" rehearsals last weekend in St. Paul.

Surrounded by "A Prairie Home Companion" memorabilia in the Fitzgerald Theater's basement green room — she was also a "PHC" guest in 2012 — the Detroit-based singer/songwriter talked about how hard it is to show a humorous side in her own music.

"I think humor finds its way into my music more through the hot-glue-gunned outfits than in the music itself," she said with a laugh.

Her stage attire could compete with casinos in brightness and color. But Worden showed up to rehearsals in jeans, a plain black top and a gold necklace that read "Lover Killer" — the title of her new single. Referencing an old Eurythmics hit, she called the song "an attempt at making my own 'Sweet Dreams.' "

"That's one of the songs that's on the theme of war," she explained, going into a dissection of science writer Daniel Levitin's 2008 book "The World in Six Songs," which heavily influenced the new album and its thematic breakdown. "He lays out six different themes that throughout history shaped how songs have been a part of our existence.

"I was thinking a lot about the value of music, when in this day and age our relationship with recorded music has changed so much. When you go to make an album, it begs the question, 'What are you doing?' I ended up trying to rediscover the value of music for me, and the value of it for humanity, as it is broken down in [Levitin's book]."

Another inspiration behind the new album was a marching band she heard at a parade in Detroit, a sound she re-created in the album opener. That experience ignited a fascination with rhythmic structure that even prompted a fleeting fascination with Skrillex and other electronic dance music makers.

"I really wanted to try to understand it, and just look at the construction of it and whether or not I could relate to it," she said of EDM. "It has a different purpose than the reasons why I make music, but it was still interesting to explore."

While nothing on "This Is My Hand" approaches 140 beats per minute, it's a percussive record, with alternative time signatures and jumbled, jagged beats akin to recent Tune-Yards work and traces of Missy Elliott-like hip-hop beats. That's in addition to the opera, modal music and other usual nontraditional influences (for rock, anyway) that she channels.

Worden, 40, was raised by classically trained musicians who worked for Pentecostal churches. "They were conservative about a lot of things, but not music," she recalled. The family moved around a lot before settling in Dallas, where she enrolled in the nearby University of North Texas' esteemed music program. That's also where she cut her teeth as a live performer.

"When you have a voice like mine, which is seen as this pretty instrument, there's an inherent need to counterbalance that in some way," she said, shedding light on the origins of My Brightest Diamond's unconventional sound and edgy backbone.

"Part of my journey when I started making music as a 'girl with an acoustic guitar' was to figure out how to overcome that pretty-voice stereotype. When you're surrounded by boys like I was in school and you're a 'girl singer/songwriter,' you're going to have a difficult time being taken seriously as a composer."

She certainly has been taken seriously. In addition to her four MBD albums and the stints with the Decemberists and Stevens, Worden has lent her golden voice to a wide array of other collaborators, including David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, Bon Iver, Pulitzer-winning composer David Lang and members of the National. Meanwhile, she and her husband are busy raising a 4-year-old son, Constantine.

"By doing these collaborations with different musicians and classical institutions, it allowed me to be with my son and go out on these real short-term projects in less conventional ways and not have to spend nine months in the van," she said. "I'm also always eager to learn something new in music, and those were all people I could and did learn a lot from."

However, she admitted, "It gets to where you're more recognized as 'that girl that did so-and-so.' I'm really going to focus my energy on My Brightest Diamond again."

Unless maybe Heart comes calling.

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658