For the past eight years, New York singer-songwriter Nina Nastasia has been making music at once emotive and understated. Delivered with a flat, talky indifference, lines about ghostly deaths and mundane domestic hopes are fused together into a sinister folk reality. In her latest effort, “You Follow Me” (Fat Cat), a collaboration with the Australian drummer Jim White, Ms. Nastasia eschews her familiar cellos and pianos, as well as the style of affected understatement, to deliver a rich collection of songs.

Only 10 months since her last album — the critically acclaimed “On Leaving,” which pared down her band to a lonely few — Ms. Nastasia has taken “You Follow Me” one step further, to just herself and a drummer, yet she emerges with more. Legendary producer Steve Albini, known for his work with Nirvana and the Pixies, has long counted himself among Ms. Nastasia’s ardent fans, and here he has again leant his considerable production acumen.

Though Mr. White played drums on Ms. Nastasia’s previous albums, on “You Follow Me,” he has only her guitar and voice to respond to, yet his sound is given the power of an entire band. The smattering, untimed brushwork and drum kicks that define Mr. White’s trademark sound, which he invented with Australian instrumental trio the Dirty Three, is in full effect here. The result is a few songs, such as “There Is No Train” and “Our Discussion,” which share the disarming beauty of some Dirty Three tracks, like those on the 1998 album “Ocean Songs.”

A little song that comes off as a reflection on a relationship, “Our Discussion” exemplifies how much is accomplished with this spare setup. It turns into a confession of leaving and disbelief — “I might leave tomorrow / To feel the joy of a new start / I don’t believe in the power of love / I don’t believe in the wisdom of stone / I don’t belive in a God or a mind.” Ms. Nastasia’s singing follows an irregular rhythm, moving from straight-speaking, slightly accented talk to a light lilt. Two voices emerge: one that speaks to the lover, and one that sings to oneself. Meanwhile, a light guitar plays a simple tune, only coming to the fore in the last few chords when the singing leaves off. Mr. White’s drums are a formless musical response, almost a single intuitive release that stays just beneath Ms. Nastasia’s voice, emphasizing the meaning of words by changes in volume, texture, and force.

And there is variety. “LateNight” is all screams and whispers, and Mr. White plays a more conventional, timed rhythm, punctuating the final seconds of the song with a breakdown of snare and kick drum. Whether out front or in the back, it seems Mr. White never makes a move that he doesn’t mean wholeheartedly.

As it stands, however, the quieter songs on “You Follow Me” deliver the most magic in this musical exchange. Ms. Nastasia’s baroque sparseness lends itself best to lyrics about love, waiting, and family, and also the darker things, too. But it’s how the music fits the words, and vice versa, that is so impressive.