LAURA VEIRS IS BLAZING LIKE 'METEORS'.

Byline: Fred Shuster Music Writer

The other day, Laura Veirs was holed up in a ghostly little hotel in the barren Arizona desert. It was the kind of place the uncommon singer-songwriter felt comfortable.

Veirs likes raw nature. Growing up in Colorado Springs, she learned to appreciate dramatic terrain. Years later, she found herself living happily in a remote, arid stretch in northwest China.

``The desert was called the Takalamakan - which in the local language meant, 'You can get in but you can never get out,' '' she said. ``That's how I feel about songwriting now. I've started and I'll never be able to stop.''

Veirs has been traveling music's back roads since the late '90s, but she's now receiving wide recognition for her recently issued fourth album, ``Year of Meteors'' (Nonesuch). Rave reviews have appeared in everything from The New York Times to Mojo.

The brainy Seattle-based chanteuse's stark, melodic, poetic songs plainly strike a chord.

``I like the idea of meteors - they're transient, they flash brightly, and then they're gone,'' Veirs, 32, said. ``The songs are about motion and movement and impermanence and escaping from the heaviness of the world.''

Veirs - who appears tonight at Spaceland in Los Angeles with her Tortured Souls band - started playing guitar at Carleton College in rural Minnesota. Initially, she learned folk songs. But after a friend introduced her to Bikini Kill, Sonic Youth and other noisy post-punk groups, she convinced three girlfriends to start a punk band. It was so much fun, she nearly abandoned her geology and Chinese studies.

Veirs, whose parents were both teachers, was then considering a career as either a Chinese translator or diplomat, geologist or some other sort of scientist.

``I was fascinated by the Chinese language,'' she said. ``Until about 10 years ago, I could speak it fluently, then my interest in music took over.''

Over the years, Veirs has worked as an ESL teacher, a math tutor, a science demonstrator at Seattle's Pacific Science Center and a gardener. In 2003, she made the leap to being a full-time musician and guitar, banjo and songwriting teacher. Although primarily self-taught, Veirs took six months of guitar lessons from a country-blues guitar-player, and this is where her finger-picking style comes from.

``It's a job, and I can feel it wearing on me,'' she said from the Arizona desert. ``Touring is kind of fun but tough. We just got through with a 12-hour drive. It's not good on your body, and there's all this sitting around waiting.

``When I go home, I do yoga and eat well, but then I get back out here and I'm immediately smoking and drinking again. It's a very topsy-turvy existence.''

Fred Shuster, [phone]

fred.shuster(at)dailynews.com

LAURA VEIRS

Where: Spaceland, 1717 Silverlake Blvd., Los Angeles.

When: 9 tonight.

Tickets: $8. Call [phone]; ticketweb.com.

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``I like the idea of meteors - they're transient, they flash brightly, and then they're gone,'' says Laura Veirs, who brings her stark sounds to L.A.'s Spaceland tonight.