Critics don't seem to know how to label singer-songwriter Chloe Day.

Day switches musical styles depending on her mood and what she says is the requirements of each song. Although her songs vary widely between electronic, acoustic and jazz, her sugar-sweet voice makes them all easy to listen to and familiar.

"Some songs, you just know from the melody and the way the words feel, you can sense what genre it is," Day said. "There are two basic ways people write songs: some people are great at the theory, they can read music and get all the technical parts down. I'm not good at the technical parts. The other approach is more on instinct, more intuitive. I'm leaning more on what is familiar, what I've heard before, what I feel, what naturally comes out. I wouldn't be able to tell you what key a song is in when I first start writing it. It just comes out the way it wants to."

When she spoke by phone with the Reno Gazette-Journal recently from her Santa Monica home, we asked her to examine a few of her songs -- "Eddy" off her newest EP, "Sugar," "With You With Me" from her full length CD "Pixie Runway," and "Kingpin" from 2003's "The Return of... ." We asked her to explain the story behind each song.

1. "With You With Me" is an acoustic pop song from "Pixie Runway" and talks about being "Trapped between the Beatles and the Deftones."

That song got written in two minutes; it just popped right out. We had just come back from a gig, there was a good feeling that night, we were all high from having a great night and hearing great music.

"With You With Me" is about not getting too caught up in the world changing around you. When you get stuck in your own head trip and your own experience of the world, it can feel like a time warp, and it can act like one, because it's easy to miss events and big things that change around you if you're not tuned in. There is lots of (music) going on that are just as valid, but not mainstream.

2. "Eddy" is a breathy and predatory trip-hop song with tribal beats. Day sounds seductive and scary when she whispers: "You're gonna tremble when I talk/you're gonna fall before me."

That's a dark one. A really good drummer that I worked with on a lot of "Pixie Runway" -- we called him Caveman Dave -- he pulled through for us and made that (beat). He's an old friend of (producer Meghan Gohil's) from St. Louis who's in a band called Paint the Earth.

I like horror movies. I watch a lot of them. When it first came up, it was around Halloween and I was watching a lot of horror movies. I had these images of being in a rural area and a serial killer on the loose. It's all about a power trip. (The title) is a play on words. Eddy always sounded like a creepy, menacing name, but it's also like a whirlpool.

3. "Kingpin" is jazzy with a static sound, like it's being played on an old record.

It was written around a loop, we were just having fun with a some loops when I very first met Meghan. We had mutual friends from high school. At the time, I listened to a lot more electronic music. That's my favorite genre, but I go back and forth. I wanted to write electronic music, but didn't have any idea how to go about it.

Meghan said, 'Oh my God, I want to do electronic music, too.' So, we started listening to what she had in terms of resources. When I heard it, I said, 'Stop right there.' It wrote itself. When we got the trumpet player, Johnny V in, he had a lot of experiences -- he played with Slash -- he had great instincts, and everything he played fit perfectly.