Monday Music Muse: Keren Ann

Melancholy, fresh familiarity, and a geography lesson in a soft mezzo-soprano.

Before we launch into today’s indie muse, there’s another piece of music goodness simply too good not to share: The audio archive of iconic Canadian radio show Inside The Music, where you can find anything from a documentary on Jamaican Dub music, to a jazz portrait of the great Guido Basso, to full concerts by TED-tested, Carnegie-Hall-approved virtuoso Natalie MacMaster. So do check it out.

Today, we’re looking at a genuine culture-crosser: Israel-born, Paris-and-New-York-based singer/songwriter Keren Ann is the daughter of a Dutch-Javanese mother and a Russian-Israeli father. (Nope, that’s not a typo — Java is a very real island in Indonesia.) Naturally, her music is so impossibly eclectic that it oozes a vague aftertaste of familiarity — think Feist meets Carla Bruni meets The Beatles — while being completely original, lingering in the delightful limbo between indie folk and Nouvelle Chanson.

And if she sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because her music has quietly snuck into some of TV’s biggest hipster darlings of the past few years: Her song L’Onde Amère was featured on a 1st season episode of HBO’s Big Love, and Jardin d’Hiver made it onto the final season of Six Feet Under.

Check out Keren’s latest self-titled album, pure gold to begin with, but embezzled with such gems as the beautifully melancholic Liberty and the quietly burning In Your Back.

Monday Music Muse: Dan Auerbach Keep It Hid, the solo debut of Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach, is pure rock indulgence – good music supreme....
Monday Music Muse: Anathallo A fantastic chamber indie-pop band unlike anything else out there....
Monday Music Muse: Matt and Kim How to drive your neighbors crazy, or why Columbia has nothing on the Pratt Institute....
Monday Music Muse: Rachael Cantu Cross-country coolness, a mandatory comparison, and how to go down with the devil's thunder. ...
Monday Music Muse: Kat Edmonson The best new jazz vocal in years, a delightful island of brilliance among the sea of SXSW mediocrity. ...