Joan Osborne has always been willing to take chances, dotting early independent releases with covers drawn from sources as diverse as Sonny Boy Williamson and Captain Beefheart. But as she proved on her 1995 breakthrough disc, Relish, she's just as capable of tapping into an emotional sensibility that one needn't have an extensive record collection to appreciate. That album introduced Osborne to the mainstream via the hit “One of Us” (later the theme song for the C-B-S drama Joan of Arcadia) -- and also afforded her the luxury of pursuing artistic and personal goals that went far beyond the standard pop-rock continuum.

“One of the things I'm most proud of is that I was able to travel to India to perform for the Dalai Lama at a benefit for Tibetan refugees,” she recalls. “I also studied qawaali singing briefly with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and that had a profound impact on me. I see a lot of similarities between that and American gospel music where it's literally meant to take you higher spiritually and take you out of yourself. We need that in our lives.”

Her ability to do just that has earned Osborne fans in high places musically speaking as well, as borne out by her appearances alongside fellow vocalists like Al Green, Bob Dylan and Luciano Pavarotti. She's also forged a fruitful relationship with the Dead in recent years, having been set up on the musical equivalent of a blind date in 2003 by the booking agent they share -- a liaison that helped coax her to cover “Brokedown Palace,” which originally appeared on American Beauty.”

“That particular song is one that I've never performed with them and have always wanted to,” she says. It's either not in their rotation, or someone else sung it. I always coveted that song so I decided to do it on my own record.”

Osborne's interpretive skills have always been unimpeachable -- as evidenced by the plethora of tunes she's honed over more than a decade's worth of live shows, not to mention 2002's soul-drenched covers set How Sweet It Is. And while that talent is certainly on display here -- particularly in covers of Rodney Crowell's “When the Blue Hour Comes” and Kris Kristofferson's “Please Don't Tell Me How the Story Ends” -- Pretty Little Stranger's most lingering material comes from Joan's pen, an instrument she wields with élan, dipping unerringly into the lifeblood of relationships -- romantic and platonic alike -- in order to paint the most vivid pictures of her career.

“They are by and large really personal songs -- things that have come out of my life and my romantic landscape,” she explains. “It's kind of liberating to be able to let that stuff go out into the world. It's more honest and more interesting way to do it rather than just make up something that could've happened to anyone. I wanted to delve into my own experiences with heartache and cheating and all those things that go into good country songs. To me, it was okay to do that at this point in my life. I don't feel I have to be guarded about it anymore.”