Birdy

Normally I'm not that big on artists getting fame by releasing cover songs, but when I heard this incredibly beautiful cover version of Bon Iver's "Skinny Love" I had to adjust those views immediately. Loyal readers know I'm a sucker for piano driven music, and this stripped down version with piano instead of guitar managed to grab me from the very first few seconds. It's still a cover, but still sounds very original. Can't wait to hear what her own songs sounds like! Birdy is one Jasmine Van Den Bogaerde, a fourteen-year-old (!!!) singer/songwriter from Lymington, England whose self-released version of Bon Iver's "Skinny Love" has broken through on the U.K. charts. It already reached the 25th place and got her a deal with Atlantic UK records and an beautiful new Sophie Muller-directed musicvideo. Let's just hope that Jasmine stays true to herself. If so, she'll have a bright future in front of her.

@ Lymington, UK

♫ Acoustic, Piano, Pop

♥ Skinny Love (mp3)

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Anna Von Hausswolff

I am having a really hard time remembering the first time I heard Anna von Hausswolff. But what I will never forget is how her music touched me from the very first seconds she started singing on “Track of Time”. With one the of most honest and expressive vocals I’ve ever heard, Anna makes you feel it in your bones. “Her voice is that of total expression” as her bio says it. On her ten-track debut album, Singing from the Grave, which was released in May after her Track of Time EP, 23-year-old Swedish pianist and singer-songwriter Anna von Hausswolff sings about gloomy Sundays, lovers lost at sea, life, death, pills, and all things gloomy in between. Although Anna already has been attracting plenty of attention in Scandinavia she sadly remains somewhat obscure outside of her homeland. All genuine music lovers should give this enormously underrated album a listen and spread the love!

@ Goteburg, Sweden 

♫ Alternative, Folk

♥ Track of Time (mp3)

▸ Official Website

+ Spotify

Christina Perri

Not a lot of artist featured here on LMLI are already as succesful in the charts as today's feature. Despite her succes and big record label deal I still thinks she deserves your attention. And definitely should not be labeled as the standard pop artist because this girl shows real promise and authenticity. At just 23, Christina Perri has already lived a handful of lives. She's toured the world as an assistant to a rock band, spent a year at a prestigious university, became a wife and then an ex-wife, produced popular music videos, made olive oil in Italy and even served as a fashionista barrista in Beverly Hills. The whole while, music had been tapping her on the shoulder, trying to lead her down a path as a musician. It seems that fate grew tired of this shoulder-tapping approach as well and went for an old fashioned sucker punch. Last June her song when her song “Jar of Hearts” was featured in So You Think You Can Dance, and became a major hit song with the track sold 200,000 downloads in three weeks. Suddenly a hot property, Perri signed a record deal with Atlantic Records and is in the studio finishing up her debut album, with an eye toward a late fall release. Though she's a newcomer to the pop charts, Perri has actually been preparing for this moment since she was a child. Perri first sang in public at her Holy Communion at age six. Piano lessons began at age 8, followed by musical theater from age 11. At 9, her piano teacher "fired" her (as she puts it), because "I would change the endings to all the songs because I didn't like the way they were written. I liked my version better." Perri picked up a guitar and taught herself to play from watching VHS tapes of Blind Melon (whose guitarist, Christopher Thorn, recently sent her a congratulatory email via MySpace). The songs Perri is recording for her debut album are all about love. She excels at setting dark, tumultuous emotions to stunning, pretty melodies, something Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette excelled at back in the day. "I would love to bring that back for a younger generation," Perri says. "I had them to listen to when I was young, but girls today don't really have their Fiona or Alanis. And writing about love and heartbreak is just who I am. I've tried so hard to write about other things, but ultimately this is what comes out of me. I have zero capability to do anything that is inauthentic to who I am.

@ Hollywood, USA

♫ Folk Rock, Pop

> Jar of Hearts (mp3)

> Bang Bang Bang (mp3)

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Merry Ellen Kirk

Attention A Fine Frenzy fans, and everyone that enjoys brilliant and pretty piano enriched folky pop songs. Meet Merry Ellen Kirk, an incredibly talented singer-songwriter that grew up in Mongolia, but now lives in Nashville. Even if I tried, I could not describe better what her music sounds like than she writes about it herself in her masterpiece of a biography that is in itself is worth reading, so don't skip down the music without giving your eyes a treat as well.

Sometimes at night fireflies light up; and so we catch them and put them in a jar. Living beings they are, and lamps they become until they burn out and die. They serve one purpose--to entertain. A song holds within itself a certain power of the same measure. When it is created, it holds captive the thoughts and ideas, emotions and inner turmoil of its creator...over time the song grows and evolves, and though it may mean different things to different people, its final end is to give the listener pleasure. And so, here you are---my jar of fireflies.

"Invisible War" is my first jar...a collection of some of the first fireflies I ever caught; mostly they were just sprouting their wings in that time, learning all about life, exploring the world, and frolicking about with me in fascinating places like Mongolia, where I lived until I was eight. Really I caught the first specimen in this particular jar when I was fifteen--"Song of the Open Road"--based on the Whitman poem of the same name.

Now, at 20, I'm always chasing around a few fireflies at a time, attempting to master the art of capturing the most elaborate creatures. The idea is that the better the creature, the longer it will stay alive and the brighter its light will shine. We need bright light, see, because it's dark sometimes, very dark.

I have dreams about how the world should be. Indeed we live in a place which was meant to be beautiful; though we oftentimes ruin it ourselves by default. In science there is the idea of entropy--the tendency of things toward disorder. If a vase is sitting on a little table, it's quite probable that it could fall off and shatter into a hundred pieces, if not rather unlikely that all those pieces would jump back together again and shape themselves once again into a beautiful vase--unless of course someone worked very hard to glue it all back together into something new and different.

Unfortunately the implications of this in real life are much more complicated than a single vase shattering to the ground. We see natural disasters that destroy and reshape lives; wars, rumors of wars that create tension and dissension between people groups; poverty, disease, starvation, and everything that lies between.

These are the things which burden my heart, and the things which I've always felt compelled to express through my music. If all I do in life is shine a little light into the dark spaces of the world, my time on earth will certainly not have been wasted.

So I catch fireflies.

@ Nashville, USA
♫ Indie, Folk, Pop
♥ Blinding Me (mp3)
♥ Masquerade (When We Dance) (mp3)
▸ Myspace
▸ Offcial Website
▸ BUY!!

Breanne Düren

Have been meaning to write about Breanne earlier. I had been on the look out for her album since I discovered her a while ago through MySpace and heard one of her songs "Black Coffee". In a world of countless emerging musicians, young Minneapolis singer/songwriter Breanne Düren certainly stands out. Her alternative pop style, ornamented with hints of jazz and folk and dressed with profoundly thoughtful lyrics influenced by life, knowledge, regret and faith makes for an exceptionally enjoyable and unique listening experience. With an occasional sweeping cello behind her silky vocals and creative piano parts, twenty-one year old Breanne Düren is bound to surprise and captivate music listeners of all kinds. Tracks like Lenses, Black Coffee and Warm Water making her selftitled debutalbum definitely worth the effort and that can be the first step in a very promising future for this young singer-songwriter.

@ Minneapolis, USA
♫ Alternative, Pop
♥ Black Coffee (mp3)
♥ Lenses (mp3)
▸ Myspace
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Susan Enan

I've seen Susan Enan's picture many times across the internet, especially on the recommendation section of last.fm, or in the similar artists, but always refused to try her music. Two weeks ago, I finally gave it a go, and I still am asking myself why I haven't tried her music earlier.. So please be wise, and don't hesitate to give this woman a chance!

In 2000 Susan Enan released her first solo EP. ..'one' was recorded in a small studio, all played, programmed and mixed by Enan. With a new band in the summer of 2002 she produced the Moonlight/ Skin, Bone & Silicone EP, which was officially released in Ireland in September 2003. Hotpress called the record a late night masterpiece. Enan spent much of 2003 on the road in Ireland and the USA. During this time, she was commissioned to write a group of songs, based on Monteverdis Madrigali guerriere ed amorosi (1638). They were performed by Enan and a four piece ensemble in March at the Cresent Arts Centre, Belfast, alongside incidental music by composer Peter Rosser. Other instrumental projects included string arrangments for Michael Camerons album Fragile and two piano studies as a soundtrack for the art installation Sizing Thoughts by Sam Mckee. Enan has toured extensively in Europe and the US. She has opened for Tony Bennett, Roger McGuinn (in the UK and USA), Aqualung, Damien Rice, Tom McRae, Mike Doughty (of Soul Coughing), and toured the USA for 38 dates with Over The Rhine. After living in Northern Ireland for a number of years she moved to New York at the beginning of 2005. She's working on her debut album right now!

@ Brooklyn, USA
♫ Acoustic, Folk, Pop
♥ Bring On The Wonder (mp3)
♥ Monoplain (mp3)
▸ Myspace
▸ Official Website