On October 31 of last year, soulful folk songstress Basia Bulat wasn’t trick-or-treating, bobbing for apples or boogying down at a costume party. Rather, she was haunting the halls of The Banff Centtr. There, she joined Calgary’s Mark Hamilton and Foon Yap of Woodpigeon, Vancouver’s Analog Bell Service and über Chicago underground rock engineer Steve Albini for the centre’s second annual Indie Band Residency, and what proved to be a fruitful series of recording sessions.

“Mark Hamilton is the most prolific person, it’s actually crazy,” Bulat says with a hearty chuckle. “I wish I could write as many songs as he does, and the thing is that all of them are good. He’s like Dolly Parton, he’s got so many songs. You can quote me on that, too — in that context!”

The Rocky Mountains rank high on Bulat’s list of favourite places to visit, but the last few years have found the Toronto-based singer sojourning everywhere from the U.K. to Australia to San Francisco, the latter of which resulted in a choir-accented live performance for website La Blogotheque (blogotheque.net/Basia-Bulat). Nonetheless, the recent touring experience she describes with the most relish is a 2009 concert at Brisbane’s Queensland Art Gallery.

“In Australia, we played in some really, really awesome venues,” Bulat says. “The one in Brisbane was inside their gallery of modern art. Inside the Picasso exhibit, they set up a giant stage with a grand piano and basically just said ‘OK, now you can play in this beautiful space surrounded by all this beautiful art.’ It was really cool, but also kind of intimidating.”

This globe-trotting comes hot on the heels of two significant events in the 25-year-old chanteuse’s career: signing with the seminal U.K. record label Rough Trade and being shortlisted for the 2008 Polaris Prize back home. While she didn’t take top honours, Bulat remains enthused on the selections made thus far by the now four-year-old award series for Canadian musicians.

“Being shortlisted was such a nice surprise; just totally unexpected,” she says. “I think it was a great thing that Caribou won in 2008, and I’m thrilled that Effed Up [Bulat’s own censoring] took the prize last year. I wouldn’t want to be in that jury room, though — that’s for sure. How do you get 12 people to come to a consensus on one album? That seems like it would be impossible. I’m not really competitive, and confrontation in general makes me feel nervous, so that’s kind of why I make music.”

Competitive or not, one area where Bulat surely stands out is in her choice of instrumentation. Many articles and reviews seem to focus squarely on her use of the autoharp, a stringed, chorded zither dating back to the 1880s that has since been gripped by musicians such as June Carter Cash, PJ Harvey and Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear. However, with a music teacher for a mom, Bulat has also tried her hands at the saxophone and upright bass, and nowadays trades off on guitar and piano as well.

“What I love about the autoharp is that it has a bit of history behind it that I find really interesting,” she says. “It was invented for people who didn’t really know how to play anything else, or who couldn’t afford something like a piano or organ. It was just meant for people who came to Canada or the United States in the 1890s and wanted to sing or play music together in groups. It’s really easy to play and accompany yourself on, and I also like how it’s a bit scrubby and rough around the edges, but has moments where it sounds really magical.”