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Getting to the bottom of lang's jitters requires going back to last year, when she was cutting the album. It's a few weeks to the new millennium and lang has just finished laying down her vocal tracks at Conway Studios, a recording complex on the seamier side of Sunset Boulevard. She sits in front of the massive sound board, guarding its joysticks and levers. ''Only about three people and one dog in the whole world have heard this so far,'' she says. The fortunate dog in question — an adopted chestnut-colored mutt named Saylor — circles an old pillow five times, then plops down. ''What do you think, Saylor?'' lang asks. ''Should we let him hear some music?''

Apparently, a deliriously happy tail wag means ''yes'' in dog-speak, and lang edges up the master volume on ''The Consequences of Falling,'' the new album's first track. Lang closes her eyes, bows her head, and clasps her hands together. You can almost hear her heart beating. A few minutes earlier, over bananas and Oreos, lang had been saying, ''For the first time in a really long time I want to connect with people. And I have to be honest, I could have cared less for many years, because I just felt kind of selfish about my art. Now...I want to put myself out there and that's always a little frightening.''

Of course, it helps that lang had such a good time over the past few years, drifting in and out of the business without any real urgency. She recorded Drag, an album of standards and assorted classics inspired by cigarettes and smoke (odd for an ardent nonsmoker). She produced a record for the folk-rock girl band the Murmurs. She also made guest appearances on Dharma & Greg and Ellen, and had a role in this year's Ashley Judd psychodrama Eye of the Beholder.

''In terms of attitude, it's like night and day from where I was last time around,'' lang says between songs. ''I'm truly happy for the first time in a long time, and I wanted to share that. My time off really allowed me to absorb and reflect.'' People close to lang certainly sense a change. ''I think her time off has given her a stronger appreciation for having fun,'' says her friend and longtime record-company guru Carl Scott, senior VP of artist development at Warner. ''It's almost like k.d. made this huge discovery in her life.''

In fact, that discovery has a name. It's Leisha Hailey, 29, the Murmurs' lead singer and lang's companion and muse since they met four years ago at a friend's birthday party in L.A. They hit it off, and lang found herself reevaluating what she calls ''the ridiculous treadmill of making records and touring, making records and touring, that was my life.'' Though lang had risen to ultra-diva status — remember the cover of Vanity Fair with Cindy Crawford giving k.d. a straight-edge shave? — she still seemed to suffer from a yearning, the driving force behind her biggest hit, 1992's ''Constant Craving.''

Now, though, that longing seems to have been satisfied. ''Leisha has helped me say goodbye to all that,'' lang says. ''She's responsible for allowing me to find that satisfaction within myself again. I just always feel happy and up when I'm around her. I had been missing that feeling for a long time.'' Hoping to avoid playing, in lang's publicist's words, ''the Julie Cypher role'' (a reference to Melissa Etheridge's longtime companion), Hailey, a Bellevue, Neb., native and sometime commercial actor, chooses to stay mum on the subject of her lover.

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