Great Scot KT Tunstall

Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall was raised by a pair of ultra-academic parents who never bothered with a stereo. "All my friends listened to Marvin Gaye," she says of her childhood in the coastal city of St. Andrews. "Meanwhile, I was dancing around to songs about the periodic table as sung by a Harvard mathematician." Nonetheless, Tunstall -- whose country-blues single "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" is taking off on VH1 -- fell in love with music at a young age. "I used to draw pages of musical notes, not even really knowing what they were," recalls the singer, who began piano and flute lessons at age six and started penning her own tunes when she was sixteen.

After college, Tunstall taught herself guitar from a "busker's booklet" (a pamphlet of basic chords) and moved to the Scottish countryside to join an eccentric folk group called the Fence Collective. "They live very frugal lifestyles and record and gig," says Tunstall, who met the Beta Band through the group. "We were all in different cottages dotted around -- no heating, open fire, dogs, pasta. It was very romantic."

In 2003, after six years of indulging her inner hippie, Tunstall moved to London in search of a record deal -- but her age became a stumbling block. "I was on the wrong side of twenty-five," says the now thirty-year-old singer. "And even though Norah Jones opened the golden gate for female singer-songwriters, most labels had signed their one girl already."

Tunstall got her break with Relentless Records -- a tiny label whose roster included the So Solid Crew and Daniel Bedingfield -- which released her debut in the U.K. in late 2004. Eye to the Telescope, with smoky, guitar-driven folk ballads given a pop sheen by U2 remixer Steve Osborne, scored a nomination for the prestigious Mercury Prize and has already gone double platinum in the U.K. It's also earned Tunstall a devoted group of fans who follow her across Great Britain and praise her effusively on her Web site. Tunstall admits to amusing herself on the road by reading the funnier posts: "A lot of them are like, 'She's wearing rainbow suspenders on her album cover. She's gay!' And I'm just like, 'Oh, my God. Female singer-songwriter with attitude and personality? Yeah, she must be gay.'"