Ex-Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde must have a thing for ethereal, nature-loving blondes. Last year he signed Springwatch enthusiast Stephanie Dosen to his Bella Union label (listen to her New To Q Podcast here). Now he’s announced his latest signing, Our Broken Garden, aka Danish singer-songwriter Anna Broensted.

Like Dosen, Broensted is something of a flower-child, claiming to have written her forthcoming debut EP while holed up in an abandoned village school; or, in her words, “a hidden paradise amongst hills, forests, and lakes.” Don’t be misled by the sugary language, though: a cursory listen to the unsettling When Your Blackening Shows reveals that she’s no talk-to-the-animals hippy. If Broensted inhabits a fairy-tale world, it’s the Brothers Grimm version, full of sylvan creepiness and child-like fear of the dark.

When Your Blackening Shows starts like a lost David Lynch soundtrack, all minor-key dread, topped off with the kind of emphysemic Hammond organ sound last heard scuffing the edges of a Tindersticks album. Meanwhile, Broensted addresses a slumbering lover (“Pull back your velvet drapes/Show me the bruises you’ve shaped”) with the instinctive poetry of a non-native English speaker, luxuriating in each drawn-out vowel with the sensuousness of someone for whom English is an unfamiliar and still-exotic tongue.

Our Broken Garden release(s) their/her debut EP, Lost Sailor in April. She tours the UK from 26 March.

[Myspace]