Back in March, I featured a new cover of Q Lazzarus’ “Goodbye Horses.” In that post, I mentioned the singer’s associations with several Jonathan Demme films, including a parenthetical aside that she’d performed the Talking Heads’ “Heaven” for 1993’s Philadelphia. Now, less than a month later, a new cover of that very same song gets a turn in the spotlight, courtesy of k.d. lang.

Sing It Loud, credited to k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang, marks the Canadian singer-songwriter’s first studio album since 2008’s Watershed. More notably, it’s the first recording lang’s done with a band of her own since 1989’s Absolute Torch and Twang with the Reclines. That wasn’t her plan going in, but after recording eight songs together in three days, lang told Spinner that the musicians who’d joined her (including Guster’s Joe Pisapia) became “so intrinsic to the sound of the record, I really had no option but to incorporate them into what it was.”

While in the studio, lang and the Siss Boom Bang also recorded a few cover songs, slated as bonus tracks for the deluxe version of Sing It Loud. Thus is the genesis of their interpretation of Talking Heads’ “Heaven,” which instead ended up making the tracklisting for the standard edition. “I could always hear it as a country song,” lang says. “From a Buddhist perspective, I love the lyrics and just the concept of being in a place where nothing ever happens. I love that.”

Here’s a live version of “Heaven,” which hews pretty closely to what’s on Sing It Loud:

Be sure to take a listen to another top-notch cover that lang and her band recorded for the deluxe version of Sing It Loud, The Thrills’ “Hollywood Kids.” I still love those Irish lads, even if The Thrills seemed to have disappeared after being dropped by EMI in 2008.

Purchase k.d. lang & the Siss Boom Bang – “Heaven” (Talking Heads cover) via iTunes, Amazon MP3.