She's been putting those acclaimed pipes of hers into a different sort of service for decades, but torch 'n' twang singer k.d. lang has also been known to lend her voice to a worthy cause or two.

Which is how the Canuck chanteuse -- currently touring behind her latest album Watershed -- came to take part in an Olympic torch run demonstration in Australia back in April, joining the many who've voiced concerns over China's spotty human rights record in Tibet.

"I'm on the board of directors for the American Foundation for Tibetan Cultural Preservation," says lang, 46, from her home in California. "So it's part of my duties to go and support the Tibetan people. And I'm a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner. To me, it's a culture that is based in peace and compassion, and it's a working example of how a culture can thrive on peace and compassion. If we lose Tibet, I think the world loses a great national heritage."

Of course, lang -- the Consort, Alta., native who's made her home in the Hollywood Hills for the last 16 years -- has aligned herself with causes in the past.

Most notably, she caused a stir early in her career when she took part in a PETA-sponsored Meat Stinks campaign. She's also been a vocal supporter of gay rights and HIV/AIDS awareness for years, and was part of the first wave of musicians with any name recognition to come out as gay or lesbian in the early '90s.

"I feel comfortable if I have a direct connection," she explains, after being asked how she decides which causes to give priority to.

Her decision to come out as a lesbian coincided with her move from the alt-country realm to the mainstream, a transition made possible by her seminal 1992 disc Ingenue, and its monster-single Constant Craving.

In the ensuing years, she's dabbled in everything from concept albums (the smoking-themed covers disc Drag) to sunny alt-pop (the Even Cowgirls Get the Blues soundtrack) to her A Wonderful World collaboration with crooner Tony Bennett.

But Watershed, a sparse, electro-tinged outing recorded at her home and released last February, marks her first full album of original material since Invincible Summer in 2000.

"I wasn't sure which direction I wanted to take my voice, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to contribute lyrically to the world," says lang, by way of explaining the extended bout of writers block. "In the end, I think it just unfolded naturally. I decided I didn't have to take it in a direction."

Plus, it's not like she hasn't had her hands full with other projects in the interim. Besides the Bennett collaboration and a greatest hits disc of her early country material, lang also released Hymns of the 49th Parallel, on which she covered classics by Canadian songwriting legends Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Jane Siberry.

She says the latter disc helped kickstart her own songwriting process.

"It was ominous at the onset," she admits. "But what happened is it reset a new understanding of what a good song felt like moving through me."

Though she's been careful to balance her own songwriting with interpretations of other people's material over the years, lang says she doesn't really have a preference.

"They feed into each other, and they feed me as a vocalist, and really give me insight into each," she says. "The umbilical cord of songwriting is something you don't have as an interpreter. But the freedom and liberty to create subtext and expand the characterization of a song is something you don't get because of the emotional attachments of songwriting."

And speaking of interpretations, local audiences aren't soon to forget lang's performance at the 2005 Juno Awards, where she filled in for hometown hero Neil Young, who revealed days before his scheduled appearance that he had been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm.

Despite the last-minute shuffling, lang still brought the house down with a heartfelt rendition of Young's Helpless, a performance she dedicated to the rock icon (who made a full recovery).

"I got a most beautiful message from him (afterward) which was very heartfelt, and really humbled me," says lang, who's also turned up on discs by Anne Murray, Ann Wilson and Annie Lennox over the last year. "But really, I just wanted to do a good job for him, and wish him fast healing."