Thomas Dolby is best known for his '80s hit "She Blinded Me With Science," which led many to slap a "one-hit wonder" label on him. That's about as accurate as calling Michael Jordan a "jump shooter." Dolby's got a lot of skins on the wall.

He's had his greatest impact in software, mostly with his Beatnik creation. It's found in most of the cellphones floating around the globe, and it allows your Fergie ring tone to ring so true.

Dolby is back after a 15-year absence from pop, doing club dates in support of The Sole Inhabitant, a live retrospective CD and DVD. We had a chance to mine his head space for gold.

Skin

On why his old songs still sound fresh and relevant: "I think my songs are fairly timeless. Often, a song sort of transcends the genre of instrumentation that was used in it, and in a different era you can play it in a different way. I think the difference, really, compared to a lot of my electronica contemporaries back then, was that I was writing songs you could just sit down and play on a piano and sing. So therefore, in updating them, I've allowed myself to be influenced by the styles and the sounds that have gone between. So that makes them still sound fresh."

On his current stage show: "I have a head-mounted camera, so you can see my hands as I build these tracks layer by layer. And it's projected onto a big screen behind me and mixed by a live VJ. So it's definitely a bit different."

On why he left pop music to work in technology: "I saw these great things like the Internet and digital distribution just around the corner, and I thought they'd make a huge impact on the lifestyles of musicians like myself, and allow us to distribute directly to our fans and bypass the record industry. ... I wanted to accelerate the process."

The state of the music industry: "The major companies are in a dreadful state, but as far as music fans and musicians go, I think it's a fantastic time. The best in living memory, really. The field is really wide open. A lot of the barriers have fallen, which in the old days used to keep a lot of the talented people from ever getting their music heard, and kept a lot of untalented people at the top of the heap."

On Mobb Deep sampling "She Blinded Me With Science" on "Got It Twisted": "I'm not a huge rap aficionado. When I listen to rap music I tend to be listening to the backing track, which is often very cool, very interesting. I don't always relate to the words a whole lot. In this case, I can't help from noticing the backing because it's using a lick from one of my songs. So frankly, I didn't pay much attention to the lyrics."

Current rotation: "Right now in my car stereo I've got Imogen Heap and Magnet and Bjork and Venus Hum and a few others. I'm actually not a huge music consumer. I've resisted getting an iPod because I don't think there are 10,000 songs that I like enough to make it worth my while. I'd think 500 should be more than enough."

Thomas Dolby and BT perform tonight at 9 at the Granada Theater, 3524 Greenville Ave. $29.50. 214-824-9933. www.granadatheater.com.