Bat For Lashes 'under pressure' on sales

Bat For Lashes has said that illegal downloading can make it harder for her to resist record company pressure.

The 'Pearl's Dream' singer told Pitchfork that EMI were "very lovely" when she went to them with the plans for her recent concept album, but its success has brought problems.

The star, real name Natasha Kahn, said: "Even though I think it's great that people can download music for free and hear whatever they want, for someone like me it puts me in a really difficult position.

"The record company are saying, you know, 'If Natasha sold 200,000 records, then we wouldn't interfere with her, we wouldn't try to make her f**k up her songs and butcher them for the radio'."

She added: "It's been quite hard because they didn't expect it do well, which was great. They left me alone to make the record I wanted to make and I didn't have to compromise. But now that it's successful, it's getting harder for me to fight them off."

> Click here for our review of Bat For Lashes's latest album Two Suns