One of the best things about having friends and family from overseas come pay you a visit in the summer is that you get to share your country, share your culture -- and exploit their ignorance of it for your own enjoyment.

Singer-songwriter Leslie Feist is currently enjoying that pleasure as she travels cross-Canada with her "garcons, my band of French guys" to support her luscious new album Let It Die.

"Because I had to stay and do press today, they're already driving," Feist says from her father's home in Toronto, as her Parisian musicians head west for tonight's show at Liberty Lounge.

"I held each of them one-by-one and said, 'OK, have a good time in Northern Ontario and then in Manitoba,' " she says laughing.

"My dad is like 'Careful when you walk into the hotel -- you might see a bear ...'

"They totally believed they were going to get a bear attack."

Silly foreigners. Then again, Feist is probably just getting her own back after spending the past couple of years living in France earning a name for herself as a contemporary chanteuse (that's French, right?) of light, lush fare.

It's a long way from her days in the Toronto music scene as a solo artist and member of bands such as Broken Social Scene and By Divine Right, and even further from her stint fronting Calgary band Placebo back in the '90s.

"It wasn't as much a leaving from something as a going to something," she says of her relocation overseas. "It wasn't an escape."

She notes the move was part of an exodus of her friends and compatriots in the Toronto scene, such as former roommate Peaches, the raunchy art rock diva who was celebrated in Europe before making a splash back home.

Feist says she was the "last man standing" in T.O., getting requests and airline tickets from Peaches and others to join them on tour.

"You get tickets like that in the mail, you're going to get on those flights," she says, noting those travels took her to places such as Russia, Australia, Scotland and, eventually, France.

After spending time and energy on the music of others, Feist headed into the "cocoon" of the recording studio with producers Renaud Letang and Gonzales and didn't emerge until the sweet, simple, affecting and rather lyrical Let It Die was complete.

"We went in very consciously," Feist says of the 11-track album, including covers of material by Ron Sexsmith and the Bee Gees.

"I had very specific ideas about the framework around the voice ... It was more about the function of the instruments around the voice.

"Kind of the idea of when you're at a parade and you see the floats going by -- nobody's really taking note of the fact that it's just an old Chevy with the float perched on top.

"But the float wouldn't be going anywhere if it wasn't for the rusty old car underneath -- one needs the other."