Merrill Garbus says she doesn’t like to describe her music – and that’s understandable, because doing so would be quite a challenge.

“It will be different for every person who listens to it, and I like to hear what different people pull from it,” Garbus said.

Garbus is the one-woman band tUnE-YaRdS, an act made possible by the increasingly popular method of looping tracks. She plays ukulele, she sings and she beats out rhythms on anything handy.

It may sound sparse on paper, but in the live arena she can fill a stage all by herself.

Such atypical musical stylings are the result of an atypical life, musically and otherwise. After some experiences with piano, fiddle and choir, Garbus started her adult life in theater school.

She ended up as a puppeteer, and during this time she wrote a puppet opera.

“I realized I liked the music writing better than the puppet,” Garbus said. She started a band and picked up some coffeehouse gigs, performing as a solo act that would eventually become tUnE-YaRdS.

“I gained so much from [playing solo shows],” Garbus said. “Knowing that all of this sound was coming only from me was really confidence-building.”

And it is a lot of sound. The music has heavy, rhythmic beats that mix everything from hand-claps to empty glass bottles to a baseball bat on a 50-gallon barrel. Layered over that is an over-driven ukulele and Garbus’ voice, which ranges from gentle to a rhythm-and-blues-tinged yodel.

“I was inspired by being very depressed and knowing that if I didn’t jump up and down and scream very loudly that I didn’t know what I would live for,” Garbus said.

Among her inspirations, she lists dying cities (not a band, just cities that are dying), Cyndi Lauper, Bjork and “other people being strange and free.”

Garbus has spent the last few years playing music around the U.S. and Canada, either as tUnE-YaRdS or with her other band, Sister Suvi. She is usually solo on stage, but she enjoys being a part of local music communities across the continent.

“Your shows become inextricably linked with local music scenes; you make band friends that you will have for the rest of your life,” she said.

“You start living in music all the time.”