If there's one thing that Lesley Rankine wants to make perfectly clear it is that she is NOT Ruby. Sure, she's the only one pictured on the "Salt Peter" album cover and she is the one out doing live shows to support it. But Ruby is still very much a duo, comprised of former Silverfish vocalist Rankine and WELT's Mark Walk.

Rankine and Walk met in Chicago a few years ago and went on to work together in Pigface. In Pigface, Rankine says that they "discovered in like five minutes" that their "interests were far more to do with art and creative expectations than the others." After leaving Silverfish, Rankine went to Los Angeles to work with Walk, who at the time was involved with Skinny Puppy. Pleased with the results, the duo went to Walk's Seattle studio to record "Salt Peter."

Musically, Ruby is very different from Rankine's former band. Rather than being loud and noisy, the music of Ruby is warm and highly melodic while still maintaining an experimental edge. Rankine says that two of her favorite vocalists are Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin, and Ruby allows her to finally show that she can sing like that.

"I knew that I wanted to do something much more melodic and soulful and have sort of what are perceived as traditionally feminine aspects to it," she says. "I wanted a sense of beauty and sensuality. But I also wanted it to have some kind of sinister undertone and be frightening and intense in some way."

Currently in the midst of a short showcase tour, Ruby will return to America later in the spring for a full tour. Rankine says that she is "really enjoying" doing live shows, as she hasn't toured in three years. Rankine is aware that Ruby will probably be embraced by a more mainstream audience than Silverfish was, but she's not worried about public perception.

"I know there's going to be a lot of people listening to this LP that just don't get it," she says. "But they'll like the tunes and have heard it on the radio so many times that they'll buy it. That comes with the territory and I'd rather have more people listening to Ruby than Whitney Houston. You have to do just what you want to do personally, your personal expression. And then whatever happens after that, it just gods will. I don't care, that's not my problem. All I can do is an honest expression of where I'm at artistically, and how it's perceived by other people is not my problem."