Several years ago, singer/songwriter Rana traded in Boston's bustle for the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her girlfriend of six years has family in Virginia, and Rana sums up moving there with: “I stopped knowing what my neighbors were cooking for breakfast and was looking out at the mountains instead.”

The change of environment has affected both her personal and professional life. “I had the chance to sit in open spaces and let myself and my music open up literally and figuratively,” she recalls. “It was a selfish time, to take a few years and just disappear, regroup, really find a good place to start back up from.”

The result is Rana's second recording, New Like a Stranger, released this past January. As described on the artist's website, “the simple vocal guitar tracks echo in expansive intimacy.” The album differs from her prior release, 2001's Starfishing, with Rana as the driving force behind it and fewer hands sharing the wheel.

She had been working with other musicians, trying out new material and new sounds. But when it came time to record she wanted to do it alone. “I spent so much time trying to get down to a new level of writing and expression for me,” she says, “that it was too much to ask somebody to come in and meet me at that level.”

“I think what I needed to do was change everything and see what remained,” Rana says. “I figured that whatever stayed the same was probably the most honest parts of me.”

In the end it was a simplicity of expression: “I really pushed myself to be honest, and what remained was that honesty. The purity of whatever I'm trying to express. The one thing I can guarantee is it's exactly how I felt. That's me in what I'm writing.”

Reflecting that aim for simplicity and honesty, 31-year-old Rana goes by her first name only. She says it's a Sanskrit word for princess or royalty, but notes that rana also means frog in Italian, Latin and Spanish.

“I'm Italian and my parents failed to check their mother tongue and went straight for the Sanskrit,” she explains, “because they were on the commune, I think.” She adds that her father wanted to give her a name that could only be spoken in a soft tone.

Rana's parents live in Marietta, Ga., the Atlanta suburb where she went to high school. Before that the family lived in Nashville and Miami.

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