Call her lewd, rude and crude, but electro-rocker Peaches just wants to make music that's hot, hot, hot. And dammit, what's wrong with that, the former folkie asks Jim Carroll.

EXCUSES? Peaches has heard them all by now. Every time the Canadian rabble-rouser wonders out loud why her music isn't all over the radio, another lame one is trotted out. There's the "you won't get played on the radio with those lyrics" excuse.There's the "you can't call an album Fatherfucker and expect it to be a smash hit" excuse. And, of course, there's the "you're not really going to put a picture of yourself with a beard on the cover of your album, are you?" excuse.

But Merrill Nisker keeps on asking the questions. As far as the ex-music teacher and one-time hippie-dippie folkie from Toronto is concerned, she should be a mainstream fixture. Day-time radio play, prime-time TV, the main stage at a summer festival near you: this is life on Planet Peaches as it should be.

You could call it Peaches's dirty little secret, but that's not the kind of dirty little secret most people would associate with this spiky specialist in sleazy booty-electro and edgy stadium-rawk.

"I really believe that what I have to say is absolutely normal," Peaches says. "I really don't want to know about the underground. I want my work to be seen as acceptable. I really do think I'm mainstream."

She also thinks that her new album, Impeach My Bush, will be the one to change everyone's mind about where she belongs. For a start there's the music, and that's pretty mainstream.

"On the other albums, it was about how far I could push it with minimal sounds. This time, I wanted the big rock sound. I wanted a drum kit and guitars and everything else that came with it. I wanted to be hardcore."

Impeach My Bush does sound impressive, like Kiss put through the electro-rock wringer with additional sneers and attitude. Guests Joan Jett ("she's so rock"), Josh Homme, Leslie Feist (an ex-flatmate and Broken Social Scene alumna) and one-time Hole woman Samantha Maloney ensure volume galore for her heavy-duty assault. There's also a likable new-school pop strain here and there thanks to producer Greg Kurstin. Not bad, when you consider that this album was recorded in a LA studio once owned by rock dinosaurs Toto.

But just when you think that Peaches may be about to do the impossible and leap into the mainstream double-bed, along come the lyrics. They haven't changed, you know. There are few brave souls in commercial radioland who would risk immediate dismissal by granting daytime airplay to Slippery Dick or Tent in Your Pants.

Peaches can only sigh in exasperation about this state of affairs. When she listens to the radio she hears lyrics which she regards as questionable, yet people only seem to have a go at what Peaches wants to sing about. Such double standards drive her crazy.

"Listen to all those rap records from the Dirty South. Lil John had a No 1 with Skeet and that was about jacking off. But there's a machine around that kind of music and because I'm not black and from the South, I can't be part of that scene."

She feels her lyrics about gender politics and sexual outrageousness are putting the danger back into rock'n'roll. "I think the danger element has been lost in music. I've always just made party music for people to fuck and go crazy to. Whatever content I put in flips the message and makes it subversive. It's lyrics about questioning power roles and authority.

"But, yeah, of course it's the opposite to what everyone else is doing at the moment. Pop and rock have all become so safe and conservative. Have you seen that MTV show My Super Sweet 16? My God, all these little wannabe princesses trying to get rich and famous! Kids should be raising hell, not singing about getting rich."

Just how manipulative music television can be fascinates Peaches, especially when you hear the lyrics which go with the pictures.

"For years, the images were completely sexualised, but the music didn't quite relate to it. Now, though, with hip-hop and some rock, that has changed. I'm really into hip-hop music so I've been singing along with lyrics like 'back that ass up' for years. Now, I want people to sing along with what I'm saying."

When Peaches started out in a Toronto folk duo called Mermaid Café, collaborating with Iggy Pop or opening shows for Marilyn Manson were certainly not on her radar. But once her folkie tour of duty ended, Peaches decided to go down some rather different routes.

Some avant-garde electronic music dabblings led her to Berlin and the Kitty-Yo label, for whom she released her much admired Teaches of Peaches debut album in 2000.

"What I was trying to do was make electronic music that was just as in-your-face and exciting as a rock show." Sure enough, within a short space of time, the track Fuck the Pain Away had become something of an anthem. "It's a wicked tune, isn't it? You're getting that frenzy worked up singing it." As a result, Peaches had a gallery to play to.

A move to the XL label followed, as did Fatherfucker and another sharp intake of breath all round when people first clocked the cover and then the explicit content of what was inside.

Peaches didn't give two hoots about the fuss. "I suppose I wanted to confuse people. They thought I was just this sexual thing. Well, wait until you check me out with a beard." She adds that the beard was "very itchy".

Impeach My Bush, she says, is cut from similar lyrical cloth to her previous work. "I know that a lot of people thought I was going political when they heard the title of the record, but it's no different than anything else I've done. It just seemed like a good time with everything that's going on in the world to use 'Bush' and 'Impeach'."

Still, the playful title hasn't done her any harm and plays right into what Peaches is all about.

"My whole deal is to question authority and why power happens in certain places. If you let people have power and don't question their standards, it's then that Bush happens."

Impeach My Bush is out now on XL Records