When Kaki King went into the studio in upstate New York to record the tracks for her fourth album, Dreaming Of Revenge, her producer, Malcolm Burn, had one condition: “He said, ‘If someone can’t be sawing a log in half and whistling along to the song, I don’t want it on the record,’” King recalls with a laugh. 

And so the bar was set. Burn’s mandate was just the push King needed to make her most accessible CD yet. “Even though half the tracks are instrumentals, I feel like I’m writing pop songs,” she says. “We really concentrated on the melodies. Everything I write tends to be dense and chordal, but this time the idea was to layer the challenging guitar work under very simple, beautiful melodies. I really wanted them to be memorable.”

That strict attention to song craft is a logical step for King, whose previous album, 2006’s …Until We Felt Red propelled this dazzling young guitar player and composer, known to instrumental music fans for her finger-picking, fret-slapping, and percussive thumping style, into previously uncharted indie-rock territory. Produced by post-rock kingpin John McEntire (Tortoise, Sea and Cake), Red was filled with lush, ambient soundscapes that “sound like the abstract, dreamy, and hypnotic end of alternative rock,” as the New York Times noted in its review.

“Making Dreaming Of Revenge was all about challenging myself,” King says. “And it was also about really letting go and opening myself up to a producer who I needed to just trust. I absolutely knew after the first day in the studio that Malcolm was the right man for the job.” Indeed Burn, a Grammy-Award winning musician and producer who is known for his work with Daniel Lanois, Peter Gabriel, and Emmylou Harris, was the perfect foil for King. “I went in with 11 demos and detailed notes about how each track should sound,” she recalls, “and Malcolm took one listen and said, ‘Throw that stuff away. I don’t care how you think it should sound. Just pick up a guitar right now and start playing.’ He was really adamant, because the way he works is totally spontaneous.”

In 2007, King branched out into film work, composing original music for several scenes in the Sean Penn-directed film Into the Wild, which also features two of her previously released songs. In addition, she recorded two tracks for the film August Rush, in which she appears as a guitar-playing hand double. Aside from Penn, King also has a fan in Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, who asked her to duet with him on “Ballad of The Beaconsfield Miners” from the Foos’ current album Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. 

“To have these kinds of opportunities has been amazing,” King says. “Just to know that I can walk into a room, pick up a guitar, and play a piece of music that I’ve never heard before without days of rehearsal — I feel good knowing that I’m being asked to do such challenging things.”