BOSTON -- They huddled together, the 12 of them, in the small red room filled with sunlight.

Some of the 12 sat on the floor while others packed couches or claimed old wooden chairs. They had climbed five flights up a spindly staircase in a nondescript apartment building on a side street in Boston's North End to find this temple of art in a tangled urban jungle. They had come to the St. Joseph Home for Artisans, a Catholic artists' residence operated out of a former convent by St. Leonard of Port Maurice Parish, to hear Catholic alt-rock singer-songwriter Emma Fradd.

Fradd, 35, came to the North End on Sept. 13 as part of a nationwide concert tour to promote her fourth album, "I Can Read Minds." She has previously toured Canada, England, and her native Australia. She releases her albums on her own label, Enemy Love Records, a reference to Jesus's command to love one's enemy. The album's title is her way of poking fun at her anxiety over what others think of her.

"It's not worth worrying about anyway," she said.

She bantered with her intimate audience and demonstrated her fiery, aggressive way of playing the guitar, which she called "finger picking with acoustic percussion." She taught herself the technique. It used to hurt her fingers, but she's built up so many calluses that it doesn't bother her anymore.

"Thanks for coming, everyone, sitting in this little room, hearing my little songs," she said.

Fradd, who is pregnant with her second child, wore scuffed Converse All-Stars and a tattoo of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows on her left arm.

"I got it because I was going through a really hard time," she said, "and I really loved the idea of Mary, especially throughout Jesus's passion. She was suffering, but she was never despairing."

Fradd's faith informs every note she writes. Just don't call it "praise and worship."

"It's not music for prayer," she said, though it's inspired by her own prayer life.

"Growing as a human and learning more about God's work in my life, or how I see him working in the lives of others," she explained.

She grew up listening to rock and grunge in the small city of Port Pirie, South Australia. Raised Catholic, she didn't take her faith seriously until she was 18.

"Catholic schools in Australia aren't great, and I wasn't really given a good example," she said. "It wasn't until I had the example of my brother, then I feel like I actually began to pray for the first time. Basically, that took me on a journey to meeting God."

When she returned to the faith, the only Catholic music she heard was either praise and worship or acoustic folk.

"I wanted to keep writing music that I liked, but still having my Catholic faith inform the lyrics and the meanings behind the songs," she said.

She still enjoys rock, though she no longer listens to any artists whose work is "clearly against God." Her biggest influences include the alt-pop singer Caroline Polachek and the three-sister rock trio Haim.

"A lot of their recent songs don't have particularly great content," she said, "but they're great instrumentalists, and they have great production."

Before stopping in Boston, she played for Catholic Underground in New York City. Afterward, she had concerts planned in Charlotte, Knoxville, and Nashville.

Touring isn't too stressful, she said, because she is always going home to her husband, fellow musician David Kruse, and their 20-month-old daughter between gigs. She woke up in her Steubenville, Ohio, home on Sept. 13 and would be there again that night.

She reached out to every diocese in the U.S., offering to perform, and went to the ones that invited her.

Molly Broekman, St. Joseph Home's creative director, had not heard of Fradd before she contacted the house in hopes of playing there.

"I think it's excellent," she said. "She's an incredible instrumentalist, lyricist."

It was Fradd's first time in Boston.

"I love the concept of this house," she said. "It's a great space for artists to make art, and I love the North End. It's very pretty. We went for a walk this morning. It's unlike any city I visited."

Her opening act was local Catholic musician Anthony Telles. He introduced one of his songs by saying: "This one is about some parrots that escaped from a pet store."

Telles said that Fradd's music is "technically brilliant, which I feel is lacking a lot of times in modern Catholic music."

He sees similarities in their songs, especially the way she writes about mental health and her relationship with God.

"I feel like in my own music, it's similar, wrestling with our identity and how we see the world and how faith informs everything that we talk about," he said.

After the concert, the audience was crowded in the home's kitchen. The table was laid out with cookies and donuts, homemade pumpkin pies, baked brie, dates, olives, and deli meats. A cedar-scented candle, garlic, sage, houseplants, and a bottle of holy water sat over the sink. Fradd had CDs for sale and stickers with the slogan "May I want holiness more than I want pleasure," the chorus of her song "Confirmed and Engraved."

"I think it's a prayer that's still relevant today," she said. "May I want holiness more than I want YouTube, more than I want free time, more than I want not to be inconvenienced. May I want God first before anything."

Young adult Catholics, like the kind who came to see her in the North End, make up the majority of Fradd's fanbase.

"It feels great," she said. "It feels like I'm doing something that's important and that it's being received well, and it makes me want to keep going."

Lyrics will come to her when she is in prayer. A Bible verse will stick out to her, or she will hear God telling her something. Sometimes she'll be tinkering on her guitar when she thinks, "What I just played sounds like it will turn into a song." She doesn't think of her music as explicitly Catholic. Rather, it's "music written by a Catholic."

"I feel like we can, as Catholics, we want to put things in boxes," she said.

She wants to show aspiring Catholic musicians that there are more options than folk hymns or Gregorian chants.

"It's possible to write good, wholesome music in every genre, provided the lyrics are appropriate and in accord with church teaching," she said.