As upbeat and personable as Kandle Osborne proves to be in conversation, there are times in her life when the darkness creeps in. More often than not, as hinted on the ironically titled “Sweet Dreams” from her remarkable debut album, In Flames, this tends to happen at night.

“I’m an insomniac, and that creates nightmares,” the West Coast–raised Osborne says, on the line from her adopted hometown of Mon­treal. “So I sat down one day and went, ‘I’m going to write a song that’s completely about the nightmares that I’ve been having.’ ”

Considering that her lyrics include lines like “It’s raining blood and everyone’s gone” and “I can’t tell my fear from real life,” it’s abundantly clear that the singer’s dreams are anything but sweet.

“Literally, every day I’m tired because I spend my nights running from my dreams,” she says. “It’s an ongoing concern that I’m caught up in every night—I don’t know why it happens. Last night I was lying in bed at 3 in the morning with the realization that, one day, some younger person is going to be giving my old, rotten body an autopsy before I’m either buried or cremated. It was like, ‘This is so horrible—why am I thinking about this, even though it’s inevitably going to happen one day?’ That’s why I don’t sleep. This is how my brain works.”

As one might conclude from such thoughts, Osborne’s work on In Flames doesn’t exactly fall under the umbrella of music for shiny happy people. What you get instead is songs drawing on smouldering blues, film-noir country, and infectiously slurred jazz, with the singer sounding impossibly older than her years. Beautiful touches abound, whether it’s the waltzing piano in the aforementioned golden nightmare “Sweet Dreams” or the desert-fried guitars in the thumping exorcism that is “Demon”.

Ultimately, In Flames sounds like David Lynch hanging with Amy Winehouse in a 1950s bump-and-grind club, the result being one of the biggest from-outta-nowhere triumphs of the year.

Indeed, what might be most shocking about In Flames, besides how self-assured it is, is that no one saw it coming. The album isn’t Osborne’s first shot in the music business. A couple of years back she was making moody rock as a guitarist in the Blue Violets, a band that included her older sister Coral on vocals and the multitalented force of nature that is Louise Burns on bass. In 2012, teaming up with Broken Social Scene’s Sam Goldberg Jr., she took a tentative step forward with a solo EP titled Kandle.

“I waited a long time to make an album,” Osborne notes. “The EP was kind of an experiment for me to see if I had it in me to go solo and front my own project. When I made it, I was still very timid and shy and not quite sure of what I wanted to do yet.”

Her biggest fear—even more than the idea of writing and performing her own songs—was the sound of her voice.

“I wasn’t very good at singing at all,” Osborne confesses. “That was something that I had to work really, really hard on—I’m not a natural in any way whatsoever. I could barely carry a tune, had a really weak voice, and was painfully shy. But this was something that I wanted so bad, so I really did work at it, and eventually something went off in me and I found my voice.”

That Osborne seems to have arrived fully formed makes sense when you know a little about her back story. The project officially known as Kandle hasn’t taken shape in a vacuum. After the demise of the Blue Violets she moved to Montreal a couple of years back, finding a steady collaborator in Broken Social Scene’s Goldberg, who coproduced and plays six-string on In Flames. Also behind the boards for the album was Osborne’s father, Neil, whom you might know best as the frontman for Vancouver indie-rock royalty 54-40. Having the guidance of a couple of music-biz veterans would prove invaluable, and not just in the studio. Their message was clear: don’t rush things.

“I’m sure I would have rushed into making the record if I could have,” Osborne reflects. “But after the EP came out we committed to a bunch of touring and really trying to build up the project. Then there were a lot of ducks to get in a row before I could even think about having the opportunity to make a record. I tried to record many times, and would get shut down. I still had a lot to learn. Even after I made the EP where I sang those songs over and over and over again, I didn’t think it was good enough. And I was terrified to play the songs live.

“What I did was what I always do when I try something new: not tell anyone that it’s something new,” she continues with a laugh. “Otherwise, people baby you, which makes me really nervous. I don’t want someone going ‘Are you okay?’ I moved to Montreal with the EP, formed my band, booked our first show, and then just pretended that I’ve done this a million times. There I was standing in the middle of the stage, for once in front of a mike. I just faked it until it seemed like it was going okay.”

Proving, one supposes, that the darkness doesn’t always creep in.

Kandle plays the Biltmore Cabaret on Thursday (September 11).