"I'm the king of totally in-limbo," says Luke Temple on the phone from a motel somewhere in Michigan. The Seattle-based singer-songwriter has been touring for weeks in support of his melodic debut, Hold a Match for a Gasoline World, out this week.

The weeks of wandering can't be all that foreign to Temple, who once spent a year living in the Northern California woods and working at a nearby candy store. Eventually, he headed east to become a painter in New York, where he paid the bills by painting murals on the walls of wealthy New Yorkers' apartments. A string of accidental music gigs followed, in Harlem and downtown Manhattan, including stints at the East Village's Sidewalk Cafe, where artists Nellie McKay and Adam Green got their start and Interpol's Paul Banks would take in the scene. "Back then," says Temple, "I probably had, like, ten songs."

Temple quickly caught the bug, and began writing new material. "Music's just more immediate than painting -- such a visceral, momentary thing," he says. "In New York, I'd sit for forty-five minutes with my guitar in the wee hours of the morning before work and write. And I found out that I actually write best under severe time constraints."

Nearly four years' worth of these early morning songs have made their way onto Hold a Match, released by indie startup Mill Pond Records, which lured Temple out to Seattle last year. Scattered between New York, Seattle and Baltimore, his band -- including guitarist Burke Sampson and the End of the World's Rob Stillman on piano, sax and drums -- would receive four-track tapes from Temple through the mail so each could rehearse and help piece the songs together before meeting up in Seattle to record.

The result is a collection of songs that even the most jaded, anti-folk hipster could catch himself humming on the street. The tunes are deceptively simple, with pretty melodies in the vein of Graduate-era Simon and Garfunkel and Temple's sleepy voice suggesting a melancholy just beneath the surface. And it's a serious voice, high-pitched and pitch-perfect, crossing a young Graham Nash with Elliott Smith. It's showcased best on ballads such as "Make Right With You," "Private Shipwreck" and "In the End," with its haunting lyric "It's cold here in Iceland/And the drunks on the street/Tie chains onto misery's gates."

"That guy's fucking great, an amazing songwriter," Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard says of Temple, who once opened up for his band at a college in Idaho. "His voice alone is so damn good -- one of the prettiest voices in all of indie rock, hands down. And he's handsome!" Temple is a lot more reserved about his talents (nevermind his blonde good looks). "Oh, man, to go from singing in my room to singing in front of people still feels like a big leap."

He isn't sure where he fits in, in more ways than one. "A lot of folk musicians are really conscious of coming from a certain lineage and passing a torch, but I'm not concerned with that," he says. "I take pieces of things that I like to listen to and put them together, whether it's folk or jazz. Like lately, I can't stop listening to Duke Ellington's 'Safari Suites,' and Caetano Veloso."

He's also got a bit of a Neil Young complex to contend with. "There's an emotional aspect to his music without being overly sentimental," says Temple. "He walks that line perfectly: He can pour his heart out and not become trite. That's something I'd love to be able to do. I hope I'm doing that."