Kimya Dawson is doing a typical mom chore, waiting for her car to be serviced at Jiffy Lube.

“When you’re gonna do a big trip you’ve gotta get greased up before you hit the desert,” Dawson says by cell phone from the aforementioned Jiffy Lube in Clairmont, Calif.

Dawson, traveling with her husband and their 19-month old daughter, Panda, isn’t on vacation. She’s heading to work.

Welcome to touring, Kimya-style. The singer-songwriter is well-known in alternative and anti-folk circles for her solo work as well as recordings with Moldy Peaches and Antsy Pants.

This tour may find her audience heavy with newcomers, though. Her music, solo and with her groups, dominated the soundtrack to “Juno.” The movie a hit, and so was the soundtrack, rising to No. 1 on The Billboard 200. 

“That’s a world that’s foreign to me,” Dawson says, “charts, numbers, sales. It’s bizarre. Weird.”

She still doesn’t know what, if anything, the success of “Juno” will mean for her as a performer.

“We’ll find out this trip, I guess,” Dawson says. “I’ve always had a diverse listening audience. There has always been a lot of different kinds of people coming out to the shows. There just haven’t been so many of them.”

Dawson’s songs can run the gamut from wacky to poignant to pointed, as often as not within the same song.

“My songs are all over the place,” she says. “Some are more stream-of consciousness than a direct message. Some of it’s more straightforward and some is more along the lines of lazy confessions.

“There are different ways my head makes songs,” she says. “I think my newer stuff is more to the point.”

Daughter Panda is a primary inspiration for an upcoming Dawson release, a children’s record called “Alphabutt.”

“Some of the songs I wrote hanging out with her” Dawson says. “Her name is mentioned in four of them. She sings and plays piano on the album. There are tons of kids on the record.”

Dawson’s parents ran a day-care center in their home, and she started college with a focus on working with kids before music became her focus.

“That was one of the hardest things about doing music was I was used to having long-term interactions with children,” Dawson says. “Working with kids you have to make a big commitment.

Much as Dawson loves children, her daughter shouldn’t expect a new brother or sister anytime soon.

“I don’t want to cut into my daughter’s time to be the baby,” Dawson says.

Dawson and Band of Horses play Saturday at Cuban Club in Ybor City. The show is presented by Skatepark of Tampa.