Five acts Dan Auerbach made better

Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys and Lana Del Rey.

Earlier this year, Dan Auerbach found himself hanging out with a girl in New York.

There's probably nothing too strange about that - after all, Auerbach is newly single after his highly publicised divorce last year.

The only thing is, this girl was kind of well known. Her name? Lana Del Rey.

"We met in New York City out of the blue. We were hanging out as two people, not really as Lana Del Rey and Dan Auerbach (and) we just hit it off," Auerbach says.

"She's a pretty amazing person. We were cracking jokes, it was really nice."

That friendship resulted in the pair heading to Nashville and recording the songs for what would become Del Rey's second album, Ultraviolence.

It happened, like many of Auerbach's producing projects, out of the blue - and that's just the way he likes it.

"What was supposed to be three days turned into close to two weeks. It just happened ... it was so spontaneous. That's important, it's the thing that makes it feel exciting."

Auerbach has turned his hand to many different producing projects, and says he'd love to do more if he had more time - "which I don't".

"Luckily, because I make my living touring, I don't rely on production work for a living so I get to pick and choose what I'm doing. I only work with acts or bands or artist that I really love and respect and want to work with," he says.

Five acts Dan Auerbach made better

• Nomad - Bombino
(Nonesuch 2013)

The North African guitarist and band headed to Auerbach's Nashville studio to record a series of jams, which, while delivered in the electric-blues tradition of nomadic, desert-dwelling Tuareg musicians, resulted in a hypnotic album that rises above worthy World music. Auerbach treated him like any other client, a sound to be enhanced with multi-tracking not just preserved. "He's not a f***ing desert-dweller that lives in a cave," Auerbach told Mojo, "so I didn't treat him like that".

• Locked Down - Dr John
(Nonesuch 2012)

Auerbach approached New Orleans legend Dr John with the idea to make a record that would push him out of his comfort zone. "It was really apparent to me that Mac still has a whole lot of enthusiasm for what he does," Auerbach told The Telegraph. "I just wanted him to make a record he could be really proud of. I didn't want to recreate anything, just to do something fresh, but informed by those old records of Mac's that I love."

• Ultraviolence - Lana Del Rey
(Interscope)

This could have been the album that saw Lana Del Rey dismissed as a one-album pop culture wonder. Instead, Auerbach helped her deliver an ultra-personal album full of brilliantly pouty ballads. "Every criticism that I'd ever heard about her was proven wrong," he told Rolling Stone. "From how great the songs were to how confident she is as a musician to her singing every song live ... nobody does that."

• Hypnotic Nights - Jeff the Brotherhood
(Third Man)

Auerbach helmed the Nashville stoner-rock act's 2012 album, adding harmonies to their fuzzy rawk. The band admits they were nervous: "You don't want to get yourself into a situation where you have to worry about him talking over your opinion, like, if his opinion is so overbearing," they told Fuse.TV. "But Dan was not like that at all -- he was hilarious to work with."

• Lasan - Michael Kiwanuka
(single)

This 2012 duet showed it wasn't just guitar rawk that got Auerbach up in the morning. In fact, his gentle, piano-based b-side collab with the retro soul singer may have led him towards the mopier sounds of Turn Blue. Lasan was recorded during tour downtime, and Kiwanuka called the collaboration "lucky," but the overwhelmingly positive response means there's demand for more.

- TimeOut