Tom Waits News

Scarlett Johansson only needs one (rather unlikely) man to help her make sweet music: Tom Waits.

The actress is set to release her debut album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, a collection of songs penned by the iconoclastic singer-songwriter, on May 20.

The album was announced Thursday by Atco Records, an imprint of Warner Music Group's Rhino Entertainment.

The 11-cut album, which Johansson first hinted was on her professional plate back in 2006, will feature just one original song, with the other 10 being interpretations, rather than straight covers, of tunes previously recorded by her raspy-voiced inspiration.

Even the album's title, Anywhere I Lay My Head, is borrowed from the title of a track on Waits' 1985 release, Rain Dogs.

The complete track list has yet to be announced, so it's unknown which gems from the Waits oeuvre will make the cut, though it's likely the title track, in Waits' version, a New Orleans-style jazz-infused funeral march, will be among them.

The album was recorded in just five weeks last spring at Dockside Studios in Maurice, Louisiana. David Sitek, from the Brooklyn-based postpunk outfit TV on the Radio, produced the album.

Multi-instrumentalist Sean Antanaitis, a member of the indie rock band Celebration and a longtime Sitek collaborator, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zimmer also both appear on the album.

While Anywhere I Lay My Head is Johansson's debut album, it's far from her first musical foray.

The 23-year-old recorded the one-off track "Summertime" for the 2006 charity album Unexpected Dreams: Songs from the Stars, which also counted Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Garner, John Stamos, John C. Reilly, Teri Hatcher and Julia Louis-Dreyfus among its moonlighting crooners.

Last year, Johansson appeared in the music video for Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around...Comes Around" and sang backup for the Jesus & Mary Chain in a surprise performance at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.