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“I wasn’t thinking about Prius, I was thinking about the music,” she says. “Well, `Let Your Love Flow’ [a cover of the Bellamy Bros. hit], I was thinking, I could re-create this. That song was fun, it was easy, like the Journey song.”

Haden was given free rein in her musical interpretations of oldies standards for the Toyota commercials, the corporate exec types merely suggesting doing the songs slower here or a higher harmony there.

“So I did everything they told me. The Solar song, I was thinking about the Beach Boys’ `God Only Knows,’ bubm bmm bmmm, and I did kind of a variation on that. I think it worked okay.”

The commercials’ elaborate weaves of vocal harmony and mouth sounds suggest that it must have been a difficult process to put them together.

“It wasn’t painstaking, it was fun,” she says. “I kind of wrote like I did [her 1999 a cappella album] Imaginaryland. When I got my first four-track cassette for my birthday, I just started singing. I don’t play piano, I don’t play drums, I don’t play guitar. I play violin, but I didn’t know at the time how to plug it into the four-track. So what I did was, I had a microphone and I just sang everything that I heard in my head. Like the song `Look Both Ways,’ hmm hmm hmm hmm. I just added onto that. And that’s exactly the way I did the MPG and Solar commercials –– I started with the bass, and whatever was easiest to me I did.”

The Bach-worthy detail in Haden’s Toyota choral work shouldn’t surprise, considering what she’s accomplished in previous a cappella projects, including her 1999 album Imaginaryland and her spectacular cover of the entire The Who Sells Out album in 2005. Yes, that’s right, the whole record, the voices, guitars, bass and drums, all done with her mouth and so accurately pinpointing the harmonies and rhythms that it’s headspinning. The album’s genesis is typical of the open-eared way Haden approaches new challenges.

“Mike Watt, who I’ve known since I was, like, 13, had heard Imaginaryland, so he called me and he said, `Have you heard The Who Sell Out?’ I said no. He said, `It’s so musical. There’s so many harmonies and things about it that I think you could re-create it with your voice. I really want you to record The Who Sell Out all a cappella.’ So I said, Okay, I’ll do it.

“And I just did it, like when I wasn’t doing anything else. The first song I did was `I Can See for Miles,’ ‘cause that was an easy one, and I just sang the bass and the guitar, then all the voice parts.”

A lot of times, when people attempt cover versions, they botch the harmonies, and the effect is totally ruined. She didn’t, so I tip my hat to her.

“That’s funny, ‘cause I read on some blog about the Who record, `Petra ruined that record, how could she do that?’ And someone asked Pete Townsend about it, they said I got the words wrong. And he said, `So she got the words wrong, she got all the harmonies, she got the music right, that’s what matters.’”

I’m just saying, there’s nothing worse than a bad cover version, and Haden hasn’t done one yet.

“Really? Will you let me know when I do?”

The Who Sells Out project took three years on and off for Haden to complete, “‘cause I was kinda lazy, I was procrastinating,” though not least because she was hit by a car in 2000. She finished the album while recuperating in the hospital.

One might wonder if, as these stories usually go, getting hit by a car made for a revelatory experience within Haden, engendering new creative insights and a sobering pause to reflect on who she is as a human being and artist and all that sort of thing…

“Um, no, actually, I don’t remember it all,” she says, laughing.

Suddenly she couldn’t play the cello?

“It’s weird, after the operation on my leg, the doctor asked me, `Do you play the violin?’ I said, Yeah, how did you know? He said when I was coming to, I was playing air violin.”

Even as we speak, Petra Haden is working somewhat like an octopus on a huge and eclectic variety of musical endeavors, not the least of which is her ongoing If By Yes project in collaboration with Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto and Cornelius, coming out on the Chimera label in 2009. Then there’s her new a cappella record of favorite film scores, the selection of which is typically Petra in its scope and miscellaneousness.

“I like 8 1/2, and Big Night, where two brothers are in competition with another restaurant and they’re making this big feast of all this food. Maybe the journey to playing violin owes to my love of films like ET, and Superman, which everyone knows is my favorite movie. The strings, the cellos, this big sound that I love –– there’s a part in Superman where I thought when I was a kid, I’m gonna play that part.”

The charmingly self-effacing Petra Haden, who also blows a mean hand-ocarina, on the surface sort of ambles along, doing musical things she likes or feels are important to do, hang the marketability.

“It’s very important to be true to yourself,” she says. “I think about it every day. I feel like I was born to do music. And if it’s commercial, that’s fine. I wanted to do Britney Spears’ `Toxic,’ ‘cause I really like the chorus in that. Da da da da da da…”

Ultimately, Petra Haden is…

“…I want to be like Barbara Streisand. I see myself singing loud on a stage, with everyone screaming how good I am.”

She cringes, laughing. “Is that bad?”