At her show at Los Angeles' Largo last March, British singer-songwriter Carina Round had a special visitor in Billy Corgan, an artist whom she had great respect for since she was a teenager. Soon after, Round herself recording with the Smashing Pumpkins leader on his new musical project.

"I have some mutual friends with him," Round tells Spinner about the circumstances that led to the collaboration. "I was dropping by his studio with another mutual friend of ours, [photographer] Kristin Burns. He was recording a demo for the next Smashing Pumpkins record and he asked me to sing on it." Burns photographed Round and Corgan in the studio, those photographs can be found on the official Smashing Pumpkins website.


Round, who recently released her EP, 'Things You Should Know,' describes working with Corgan as really interesting. "[Billy is] very serious about his music," she says. "The new demos I heard, the new stuff he's writing is just really great. It's not like anything I've ever heard come out of him, not to say I did not like what he wrote before.

"He seems to still be pushing himself as an artist," she continues, "which you have to respect at the age of 40, when you have such a longstanding career as him."

Asked about the possibility of her being on the new Smashing Pumpkins album, Round says, "It's too early to say. That's the kind of thing that could send Billy's fans into a frenzy."