Mia Chambray and Mohawk Radio are in the middle of their first US tour, playing shows in North Carolina, Arizona, Los Angeles and at South by Southwest (SXSW), a week-long film and music festival in Austin.

Saturday brings a highlight for Ms Chambray, who left Bermuda for Manchester, England five years ago. Join the band at Spanish Point Boat Club for their first performance here.

We caught up with the singer before their gig.

Q: How is the tour going so far?

A: We’ve been really well received. People have been really loving it and SXSW has been really cool. It’s been absolutely hectic — it’s thousands of people, but the whole vibe is amazing because it’s full of musicians, obviously, and people who are in the “business”. Arizona was amazing. We played in a cool place in Tucson called Sky Bar, a live music venue based on the stars. It’s all open. We played with a really neat, all-girl, psychedelic band called Pipelights and did a spot on local television.

The last time you performed in Bermuda was as a solo artist at the John Lennon peace day tribute in 2012. How has your sound evolved?

We’ve been described as when Cher meets Metallica [laughs], but I would say it’s more rock, borderline pop rock.

We’ve been together for three years and we know each other now, so we’ve got a better idea of what we like and what our writing styles are.

Personally, performing on a larger scale, my voice and my writing have definitely bloomed and I think having the support of an amazing band behind me is worth its weight in gold. It’s priceless. Bermuda gave me a great foundation, but now that I’ve been around singing, I’ve learnt a lot and grown a lot as an entertainer.

Because of the experiences we’ve had, the places we’ve been able to play and the people that we’ve met, we can’t help but mature and grow. We take different feedback from people and take into consideration what’s going to work for us. So much of music is opinion.

Do you feel you could not have achieved that same level of growth while you were here?

It just isn’t available. I wish it had been, but it’s just not, unfortunately. You have to go overseas because it’s just a bigger place, there’s more competition and you need that competition to grow.

There are more platforms, more places to play, more opportunities. I mean absolutely nothing against Bermuda.

Manchester is very different to Bermuda. Did you find that adjustment difficult?

It was huge. Even England. Even though you both speak English, you’re not speaking the same language. [laughs]

There are so many different codes and behaviours, but I really love it. It’s great in Manchester. It’s tough, in a good way, but it is hard. So many people trying to do the same thing.

Will you perform original songs?

It will be a mixture of originals and covers. We’ll be performing a few covers because when you go out, you want to hear something familiar. Unless the band is massive and you know all of their songs, you need a few covers to hook people in.

A crowd favourite, and I know that some local radio DJs like David Lopes play it a lot, is a song called Lifetime Sunshine. That’s a song about me moving from Bermuda to Manchester — a poppy, upbeat song, really easy to sing along to. We wrote it in four minutes one night in rehearsal — lyrics and music. It wrote itself.

And we’ve just released a new single called Two Million Heartbeats that I wrote when I was in New York last year. It’s a love ballad.

Can you tell us a bit about who this love ballad was for?

It wasn’t about anybody in particular. I heard on a commercial that you have two million heartbeats in one lifetime. I misheard. It was actually two billion [laughs]. I thought that was a really nice idea, if you love someone for every single heartbeat of your life. It was about love and the sentiment of it.

Your next single Superstar is due out later this year. Can you tell us a little about it?

That was the first song we wrote as a band and we recently recorded it at Monnow Valley studios in Wales, a famous recording studio. It was awesome. Queen has recorded there, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath. We were definitely not worthy of being there.

Do you have any stories from the road?

For the show in Houston we were supposed to stay with some other musicians. Then we went into our rooms and there were guns, three loaded guns in the one room and another in the other room. We excused ourselves to get food and then we made a game plan, booked a hotel, returned for our stuff and bolted out of there: “So sorry, we just realised our flight to LA is 8 o’clock in the morning, not at night, so we’ve got to go right away.”

It was scary. We just drove away in our minivan. That’s Texas. But we loved it.

• Mohawk Radio are playing on Saturday at Spanish Point Boat Club. Part proceeds will go to the Family Centre. Tickets are available on Premier and Bdatix