Deciding "you only live once", Dosen threw herself into songwriting, which in turn led her to performing.

"I feel as if I've never really sought the stage but just ended up here. I think a lot of songwriters are, like me, just people who like to compose songs and aren't necessarily born for the stage," she says.

"It's the number one fear of people: getting up in front of an audience. People are more afraid of getting up on stage, talking in front of other people, than they are of death. Most people would rather die than do what I do."

After moving to London while making A Lily For the Spectre, Dosen ended up playing most every night. "It's like camping in your high heels," she says of touring.

Stephanie Dosen was raised on a peacock farm in Wisconsin. One day while sifting through flotsam in the attic, she found an old guitar covered in dust. It was her secret prize. During the feather harvest, when everyone was busy, she would sneak up into the attic to compose songs for boys at school. She also wrote many lullabies for her two favorite pets, a swan and a fox.

Stephanie now writes mostly for ghosts with a rusty tape player named jean-pierre that follows her everywhere. He has made it through 7 states and 2 minor sets of injuries but still holds onto her twilight written songs with happiness. The influence of the nightly peacock mewing and swan swimming can still be heard in her music.

Her new record a lily for the spectre is filled with driving cradlesongs for ghosts gone astray. She has recently teamed horses with Simon Raymonde (Bella Union Records, Cocteau Twins) who blesses a lily for the spectre with bass and filigree sounds for lost peacocks.