Among the many performers at this year’s South by Southwest music festival in Austin to keep an eye on is Dutch singer-songwriter Laura Jansen. Born in Holland, Jansen has an embedded worldliness about her as she moved around Europe with her family at a young age, eventually landing in America. In her current home base of Los Angeles, Jansen fell in with the Hotel Café crowd, where she befriended a number of fellow singer-songwriters such as Joshua Radin, who she is currently supporting on a North American tour. With her album Bells having already gone platinum in Holland along with two chart-topping singles, “Single Girls” and a cover of Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody,” it couldn’t be a more perfect time for Jansen to introduce herself to the American masses. I caught a few moments with Jansen in between her daily CNN-fix and preparing for that night’s show to talk about life, love, and fairy tales; Cayte Nobles was on hand later that week at SXSW to shoot her set in Austin.

First of all, congratulations on the overseas success of your album and its upcoming US release!
Thank you, it’s been a really exciting year.

How is your tour going? Where are you now?
Right now I’m in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I’m playing a show tonight. We had a day off here yesterday and saw some friends play. Tomorrow we head to Boise and then Canada — I’m getting to see a lot of the country, it’s great.

I was watching your videos on YouTube, and noticed that someone had posted a comment about how they were surprised to see a successful Dutch singer — why do you think that there aren’t many musicians coming out of The Netherlands?
I think the way it works in Europe is very different; it’s almost as though each country has its own musical culture and it’s really hard to crossover. There aren’t a lot of artists from Holland who cross over into the UK or to the States. I’m not really sure why because there’s a lot of good music coming out of Holland right now that I’ve heard — it is surprising. Most people tend to go to the UK to look for music, I’m not really sure why. I’m just really happy that I get to try [to crossover].

“Use Somebody” was an extremely successful single for you in The Netherlands. What inspired you to cover that particular song?
I was doing a radio show about two years ago in Holland, sort of the Howard Stern of Holland, and what he usually asks of the guests is to play a song of their own and then also to choose a cover song from the charts. Everything on the charts was electro-dance/Euro-dance except for that song and it was a song that I was a really big fan of. The reaction to it was so strong from the live performance on the radio that we decided to go into the studio and see if we could come up with an arrangement for it for the record. It’s just been crazy how that song, it became a really personal song for me, too. It became an anthem for how life is like when you’re traveling so much and touring so much.

I read that the title track of your album, “Bells,” was the first song you wrote. Does this mean the first song you wrote for the album or the first song you wrote ever?
First song I wrote ever. I’ve been making music my whole life and trying to write. I wrote a lot of really bad, bad choruses and bad songs but I never found my own voice until I wrote “Bells.” That song came at a moment where I was really feeling a lot of homesickness and kind of feeling very lonely. I was living in Nashville and we lived next to a church and the bells would ring and it reminded me of Europe. Because in Europe you know, on every street corner there’s a church. So I would just mimic the sound of the bells and that song just kind of flopped out and it was the first time that had ever happened and it just came so easily and it opened everything else up for the next song. That’s why the record is also called Bells because it is the first song that kind of led me down this path.

You started playing piano at a young age — were you brought up more on classical music or popular or a mixture of both?
I was a real dorky kid; I loved real heavy Beethoven and Chopin. But I would listen to pop music — my mom raised me on Queen and Brazilian folk music and popular records, a lot of dance music. She’s a big reason why I love listening to weird stuff. But I loved playing classical music that was my thing.

When did you first get inspired to write your own songs?
I’ve always known I wanted to write, I’ve always known I had a story to tell I just wasn’t good at it for a really long time. It didn’t come easily to me, and it still doesn’t. It’s kind of like going to war when I sit behind my piano because I have to wrestle with my insecurities about it. If I write a verse the first thing I hear in my head is, “Ugh, I should probably throw that away,” so it takes a lot of effort for me to get to the end of a song. I guess when I was out of college and living in Nashville and going through a difficult breakup it was a form of therapy for me.

Who are some of your contemporary musical influences?
There’s so much good stuff out there right now. I’m obsessed with the Adele record right now I went to sleep last night listening to it over and over and over again. I listen to Lykke Li, this really great Swedish pop electro singer–songwriter who I think is just genius; I can’t wait for her to get more famous in the States, she’s amazing. I have a lot of contemporaries at the Hotel Café where I play in LA that are brilliant. I listen to a lot of Sara Bareilles, I listen to a girl named Jesca Hoop who I think is just incredibly good at what she does; also the new Radiohead record. But I listen to a lot of old stuff, my favorite records are from the seventies the Kate Bush records are brilliant and the later Joni Mitchell stuff, I listen to a lot of that, too.

As a child, your family moved around a lot — did you find it hard to establish solid connections with others while always being on the go?
That’s a good question — I’m not really sure if I was really aware of that as a child; kids usually think whatever is happening to them is normal so the way I lived at that time was really normal to me. But it definitely helps me out preparing for touring, I definitely think that the world is a very manageable small place to get around and I think if I hadn’t have had that experience as a child it might have been a lot harder to adjust to this lifestyle, but it served me well — I learned how to make friends really quickly and how to connect with people really quickly as a kid on the playground when I wanted to make friends wherever I was. And the world didn’t revolve around me, it was me having to adapt to the world and that was really fun.

Throughout the album you touch on various coping mechanisms that you used to get yourself through a traumatic break-up. All too often, I see girls stuck in bad relationships because they’re either scared of being single or nervous about continuing on without their current partner — what advice would you give to someone like this?
I’m definitely not qualified to give advice on relationships — I think the hardest work we do in life is relationships. I think every single relationship whether it’s bad or good is serving a purpose and teaching a lesson. I understand that situation of being afraid to leave because it’s scary to be alone, I totally had that — I was terrified to leave that relationship, but it was the absolutely best thing for me. I think you have to work on yourself before you can make room for somebody else. You have to be the person you want to be before you meet the right person and I think that’s why we meet the wrong people because we’re hoping to find solutions in somebody else. I would say if you think that you feel you’re in the wrong situation take the plunge and go figure out who you are by yourself — it’s a really exciting process.

In the song “Wicked Ways” you touch on society’s fairytale views on life and romance — do these views hold true in The Netherlands as well as America?
In Holland, people don’t get married so quickly anymore. In America, I see people getting married when they’re 20, 19…I can’t even imagine making that decision when I was 19. I was a baby, I didn’t know anything. I think there’s a fairy tale about getting married. Ultimately, I still believe in it though. I believe in that commitment. I just think it’s a decision you make later in life, you don’t make it when you’re a baby. It’s an interesting take because the fairy tales don’t really change but society does. It’s really confusing to grow up in this time because it’s like, okay, you’re supposed to be a tough, strong, independent woman, and have your own career and do all these things, but you’re still supposed to look for Prince Charming and wait to be rescued by somebody — and I don’t think that fairy tale really applies anymore.

You’re very much politically active and have previously worked at the UN in Geneva before deciding to pursue a career in music. If you were to become as famous as Bono, what would be the one issue you would use your fame to draw awareness to?
There are so many things that I feel really strongly about, but I’m learning that you have to deal with the problems in your own backyard before you can deal with other issues. I live in Los Angeles, and it’s a city where there’s incredibly wealthy people and incredibly poor people and they kind of live next door to each other. It’s a shocking thing to see in a country as wealthy and as powerful as America, that there are so many poor people and so many homeless people and so many people who are off the grid who can’t get back on the grid. Especially when it comes to women and children — the amount of children living on the streets of Los Angeles is shocking. To me, that hits close to home.

You’re performing at the South by Southwest music conference this year…
Yes! I can’t wait!

Have you performed at South by Southwest before?
This will be the third year I’ve been to South by Southwest, but it’s the first year that I have a record that I’m presenting and it’s the first year where I’m playing every day and I’m just so excited. When you’re at a festival you see everybody and it’s a big family reunion for musicians, everyone comes to Austin. In the past years it’s been sort of a combination of a big party and a couple of shows and this year I’m going full steam ahead: work, work, work, work, work, and that’s very exciting. It’s a very important place to be if you’re releasing a record. Everyone that you want to talk to is there…and I’m really proud of the record! I’m going with sense of this is the first step for me, this is the first time I’m doing this in the states and yeah, I’m getting butterflies just talking about it, I’m so excited.

Who are you most excited about seeing or playing with?
I’m most excited about seeing my own band because they’re in Holland and they’ve never been to the States, so it’s going to be hilarious for them; their first experience in America is in Texas [laughter] at a music festival, so I’m actually most excited about seeing my boys again, about playing with them. And I’m playing at the St. David’s Sanctuary; it’s the Hotel Café pledge music night and the lineup is so strong there are just some brilliant, brilliant musicians. There’s a girl called Agnes Obel who’s playing that night who I’ve seen play in Europe. I think she’s starting out in the States this month too, she’s really brilliant. I’m excited to see her set. But I’m just excited to see all my buddies play. We have the whole lineup of friends; it’s so amazing. And there’s some rumors that there’s some pretty big bands who might show up, so that’s always fun to watch the rumor mill go and see who actually shows up.