TIM HUGHES talks to a folk-pop singer with a jet-setting second job – Sarah Howells from the band Paper Aeroplanes

Sarah Howells leads a double life. Most of the time the engaging Welsh musician with the hypnotic gaze can be found playing lilting folk-pop as part of the duo Paper Aeroplanes.

But there is another side to this softly-spoken and down to earth girl next door. She is a club legend. Her powerful voice sings out on club tracks which pack dancefloors across the world, and have turned her into a dance music icon who has played everywhere from Singapore to Trinidad, Moscow to Taiwan.

It all stands in stark contrast to the heartfelt lyric-led songs of her day job.

“It’s very glamourous,” she laughs, talking from her home in Fulham, West London, this week. “It makes me money and I get to meet great people and perform in front of huge audiences, but I couldn’t do it all the time. I need to write my own songs and produce them exactly as I like them.”

And that means writing and performing often intimate gigs in small venues with musical partner Richard Llewellyn.

“Every part of Paper Aeroplanes is us and us alone, and that means more to me.”

Direct and personal, raw and rootsy, Paper Aeroplanes have acquired quite a following over the course of their three albums, with listeners falling in love with their emotionally-drenched songs.

Sarah grew up about as far west as you can get in Wales without running into the sea – Milford Haven on the edge of Pembrokeshire. She began writing songs at the age of 13 and eventually formed her own band Jylt, with friend Nia George. The band came close to breaking-through when Nia, the band’s bass player, was diagnosed with leukaemia. She died aged just 21.

“I kept thinking she’d get better, but she didn’t,” Sarah says.

Sarah decided to continue, with Richard, who comes from a small village on Cardigan Bay, standing in for Nia.

“I just wanted to carry on writing music,” she says. “I felt it was the only thing I was going to do with my life so we started writing songs together.”

They went on to form Halflight, who released a handful of EPs and supported Gossip, James Morrison and, err... the Cheeky Girls.

Finding themselves moving musically away from the band, the pair struck out as Paper Aeroplanes.

“Our music has changed a lot, though this is the happiest I’ve been with anything we’ve recorded,” she says. “We’ve found our feet and found a darker edge. It’s nice to have something that encapsulates all our influences.”

The latest album, this month’s Little Letters, follows 2010 debut The Day We Ran Into the Sea and follow-up We Are Ghosts.

Sarah describes the album as “a real cathartic outpouring”. It certainly feels confessional, with even the more upbeat songs betraying serious intent. Like the song When The Windows Shook, which deals with a series of tragic events in Sarah’s hometown, including a 1994 oil refinery explosion which caused the windows in her family home to crack, the 1996 Sea Empress oil spill disaster, and 2011’s Chevron refinery blast which killed four people, including her neighbour.

“It’s uplifting and lively, but is about some of the incidents that have taken place in my hometown,” she says. “I wanted to write about the place because it’s been a huge influence on me. It’s the last major town in Wales, the end of the train line and is far away from everything. We would get films in the cinema two months after everyone else and felt separate from mainstream culture. We grew up in our own bubble.”

On Saturday, the duo play Wood Festival – the green-fingered music gathering organised by Truck Festival founders Robin and Joe Bennett at Braziers Park, near Wallingford. Next Saturday they return to the county for a show at the Jericho Tavern in Oxford. Then, the following weekend, they play the eclectic Wychwood Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse.

The shows will give fans the chance to revel in Sarah and Richard’s world – but may come as a surprise to those who only know Sarah through her globetrotting second job, moonlighting on dance records with the likes of Dash Berlin, Paul Van Dyk, John O’ Callaghan and Oxfordshire trance producer Lange.

But that’s just how she wants it.

“The contrast between my trance career and Paper Aeroplanes is huge, but it’s that contradiction that I love,” she says. “I get to experience both sides of the lifestyle coin: staying in five-star hotels with well stocked mini-bars in South Africa, then coming home to get the National Express to Cardiff to record with Rich in his flat.”

“I had never listened to dance music or even been clubbing when I started doing this. But I have always loved singing, and it’s been great to have something new to get my teeth into.”

Paper Aeroplanes play Wood festival, Braziers Park, on Saturday. Wood runs from tomorrow to Sunday. Weekend tickets £75 on the gate. woodfestival.com.

They play the Jericho Tavern on May 25, and Wychwood Festival, Cheltenham, on May 30.  wychwoodfestival.com