OMC: How did you choose the songs for the EP? Presumably you had new ones to pick from, along with the tunes from the first record.

JM: When Daniel signed me to Burst, he already had a few ideas about which tunes he'd heard and wanted to produce from my earlier album. I played a few new tunes for him at the studio, and we picked one more that we agreed would be a good addition, "Try." But to be honest, I hadn't written very much in the year between recording "Everything I Never Asked For" and signing with Burst.

The inspiration comes in fits and starts, and that year was mostly devoted to playing live, working with my band (Racine's Shameless Place), and figuring out how to be an indie artist. It's a full-time job, on top of the five or six jobs I already had!

It wasn't until we settled into recording, my work situations changed a bit, and I started working with some of the other artists on the label that I really got inspired to write again. "Blue and Green" came from that time, and became the fifth song on the EP.

OMC: Why did you decide to re-record three tracks? Were you unhappy with the way they turned out the first time around?

JM: Hmm. I wouldn't say that I was unhappy with them, but like I said, it was my first attempt and, when we recorded them the first time, they were still kind of new to me. I didn't know what I wanted to be saying with those tunes yet.

It was my idea to play "Let Him Be" solo on my acoustic guitar and record it as a live track on "Everything I Never Asked For" but, after a year of playing it that way, I was thrilled to hear that Daniel wanted to re-record it with a full band.

"Slow," on the other hand, is just a completely different take now. The new version is almost unrecognizable compared to the old, and it was something that Daniel heard when he first listened to the original; a concept he had that he believed in enough to pursue.

"Stolen" is one of my favorite songs, one that I play at nearly every show, and the chance to put it on the new EP so that more people could hear it was just something I couldn't pass up. Again, it's very different in this version, but that's just part of the process.

As you play songs in front of an audience, and with a band, and in different settings, they change. They grow, they develop licks and pauses and emotional expression that they might not have had when they were first created. The new versions reflect a lot of that development. I'm sure that I could record all five of these songs again in a year and they'd be quite different, again.

OMC: Is the EP the forerunner of a full-length record?

JM: The EP is an EP; a collection of great songs that I'm excited to promote. As for a full-length album, that's up to Daniel. I've been talking about moving back out to California, but Burst is in Wauwatosa, and Burst is where I'm happy recording. If he asked me to stay for a full-length album, I think I'd be willing to just take a vacation and come right back to work. I don't think California is going anywhere.

OMC: Tell us a bit about the remix project.

JM: The remix project is a collaboration with Sony, kind of a cross-promotion that the guys at Burst came up with. Sony will be hosting a contest on their ACID Xpress software Web site, where people will be able to download my vocals and use them to create their own versions of the songs, in their own style. The EP itself has a CD-ROM portion that includes the same vocal tracks, plus the ACID Xpress software -- so if you buy the EP, you can go home that night and remix your own "Stolen EP"!

It's really a completely different take on the style of music that I'm known for. Whereas I'm generally considered a pop or acoustic singer / songwriter, the contest is dipping into the electronic and club music realms. And I love it. I was talking with one of the people who has already had a go at remixing a couple of tracks, and I told him that I just love hearing what someone who hasn't heard the songs over and over in their original form can do with them. The ideas that he came up with would never have crossed my mind, and yet they seem to take the core of the song and express it in an equally honest way, just through a new genre. I can't wait to hear what comes out of the contest itself.

OMC: Do you have a dream remixer; someone you'd love to have rip apart and rebuild one of your tunes?

JM: Faithless, a band from the UK. I've never considered myself a "fan" of anyone, not to the extreme that you see on MTV's TRL or anything, but there was a time in college where I thought about moving to London, stalking their producer (Dido's brother Rollo), and forcing my way into the band.

OMC: What's next: hitting the road?

JM: This summer is almost completely booked, both in and out of the Midwest, and then this fall I'm planning to do a three-month round trip tour to the West Coast. I went to college in LA and still consider it home in a lot of ways, so it will be really exciting to get back there with this new EP.

The "Stolen EP" is officially launched Tuesday, May 30 at 8 p.m. at Centanni, 218 N. Water St. Admission is free.

Julie Moffitt's Web site is myspace.com/juliemoffitt. The Burst Collective Web site is burstcollective.com.