"I've got ways to make you come . . ." sings Kathleen Edwards, lingering on the last word before adding, "back to me." The rock-heavy single (and title track) off her sophomore album, Back to Me, due March 1st, is just another example of the alt-country singer's irreverence.

"I was threatening to call the record Ways to Make You Come," says the twenty-six-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter, who named her production company Potty Mouth, "just to make it inaccessible to people who are conservative or who are unwilling to see the humor in it."

Edwards delighted listeners, critics and fellow artists alike with her 2003 debut, Failer. She was named one of Rolling Stone's Artists to Watch and also earned invitations to open for Bob Dylan and to perform at last summer's star-studded Gram Parsons tribute in California.

"My expectations were surpassed when all that stuff happened," says Edwards. "It takes all the shitty gigs and puts them in perspective. Those were experiences that will always stay with me, and will be great stories forever."

She did take some heat for her cussing, though. After Edwards said "fucking" during her set at the televised 2003 concert to promote post-SARS tourism in her home city of Toronto, she received a slew of nasty emails. "Some fuckin' asshole from the prairies was like, 'You shouldn't be swearing. It's not very lady-like,'" Edwards says. "I said, 'Do you realize that I was on the bill with AC/DC, and half their songs are about venereal diseases and sucking cock? You're just upset because you don't think a woman is entitled to speak the way a man is more than welcome to.'"

Political stance on swear words aside, Edwards does edit the foul talk out of her lyrics. "I used to think that 'fuck' and 'shit' were a really great way of expressing myself in songs -- like when I was eighteen and nineteen," she explains. "And then someone said to me, 'You use those words because you're not smart enough to fill in the blanks with more intelligent words.' And they were right, to a certain extent. Although I like being crass."