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It's difficult to determine which is more charming -- hearing singer-songwriter Imogen Heap tell a story, or the story itself, of the last time she performed in East Tennessee and almost got arrested for defacing a box of cookies on the front desk of her hotel.

Whether her theft was as bad as all that is almost irrelevant; with her British-accented lilt, hummingbird-quick pace and spritely charm, just listening to her is almost more enthralling than what actually happened.

"Me and one of the boys, he and I got rather drunk the night before that gig on Jagermeister, and he was cutting up a cookie box on the reception desk," Heap told The Daily Times during a recent interview. "Later that night, we went down to see if the cookie box was still there, and the receptionist was actually there this time. We grabbed the box and ran upstairs; I put it in my suitcase, and we left the next day.

"That evening, I was on stage when someone told me through my headset that the police were there. I thought they wanted to tell me I needed to get off the (outdoor Sundown in the City) stage because a storm was coming ... then I realized they were there because Brian and I got caught on closed-circuit TV at the hotel. And so we got a police escort out of Knoxville."

She laughs -- a whimsical sound that hints of the melody found in her singing voice. That melody -- an almost-operatic sound that rises, falls, crests and ebbs on waves of electronic composition -- has served Heap well throughout her career. In 2003, after first signing a major-label contract as a teen, she parted ways with Island Records and her bandmate Guy Sigworth in the electronic band Frou Frou, which broke through to mainstream accessibility on the strength of its inclusion on the soundtrack to "Garden State."

Her experience, however, left her convinced that major labels are unnecessary for an artist ambitious enough and industrious enough to work hard at making it. She's maintained a distribution deal with RCA Records, but her creative process belongs entirely to her -- no studio executives overseeing the production, no engineers tailoring a song to fit the needs of a label, no A&R rep dictating terms of a tour.

"Before, I always felt like I had to go through the record companies -- it was the only way I knew, because I had been signed since I was 17," she said. "When I left them, I realized I don't have to do that. I can run my career because I am my own being, so I can do what I like. It's nice to have the monetary backing when it comes to distribution, but the main thing I got from being on a label was huge amounts of confidence.

"It taught me to really have courage in my decision-making and really believe in my instincts, to realize that as long as it feels good, I should go there, and when I do that, it always ends up being the right thing. If things feel good, the energy takes you through open doors, and if they are shut, maybe there's reason for it."

In 2005, she released "Speak for Yourself," a self-made album that she took upon herself to do without any help. Mortgaging her flat to pay for its cost, she squirreled herself away for 12 months in her makeshift studio, emerging only after having played almost every instrument, written every lyric and programmed every beat and quirky electronic sound.

For the follow-up, however -- "Ellipse," released earlier this year -- she was able to relax a little bit, she said. And the result is an ethereal album of grace and beauty, full of computer-programmed melodies and rhythms that Heap's voice manages to make sound warm and inviting, a far cry from a lot of sterile electronica.

"I think with the last album, I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder -- I had to prove to myself that I could do it by myself," she said. "Some of it was showing off musically, but in a nice way. I wanted to prove that I could do it. This time, I'm a lot more comfortable with myself, and I don't need to prove that to anyone.

"At the end of the last record, Jeff Beck was coming in to play some guitar solos, and right before he came in, I asked myself, 'Why didn't I do this before?' I was just rigid -- I had to play that and that; I wasn't able to open up musically. With 'Ellipse,' it was so wonderful just to let somebody else play the music."

The critical and commercial success of "Speak for Yourself" -- it topped the Billboard Heatseekers chart and came in at No. 2 on the Top Electronic Albums chart -- also gave Heap the confidence to broaden her musical horizons for "Ellipse," she added.

"In the studio, I had great confidence to go where I wanted to go," she said. "The song 'Aha!' -- I wouldn't have put that on 'Speak for Yourself,' because I would have been too shy and would have worried about what people thought of me. But on 'Ellipse,' making a piece a little bit weird and feeling comfortable putting it out there felt natural."

The adjustment, however, came after "Ellipse" was completed -- adjusting to the idea of songs recorded in the studio as building blocks for the live setting, where technological limitations dictate that many of the songs change to fit the live dynamic. That, she said, was disconcerting at first.

"It was quite difficult in the beginning, because I was so attached to the perfect studio version of the album," she said. "Now, I'm kind of relaxing into these lucky, happy accidents on stage as they happen. I'm not trying to mimic or copy the album at all; I'm just accepting that it's a completely different album live, and hopefully the audience will be excited by this new light and energy."