10 Artists to Watch 2006

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Since 2002, Alexi Murdoch has seen his debut EP, Four Songs, become an unlikely underground hit and has watched his song "Orange Sky" - a pretty ode to brotherly love that sounds like it could have been co-written by Bob Marley and James Taylor - end up on Dawson's Creek, The O.C. and Prison Break. Now thirty-three, the singer-songwriter has finally released a full-length debut, Time Without Consequence.

SOUND Capped off by "Orange Sky," Time Without Consequence indeed sounds like the product of a slow gestation: All winding, slightly rustic acoustic grooves, golden melodies and ruminative lyrics.

EASING INTO IT The son of a Greek father and Scottish-French mother, Murdoch spent his first ten years outside Athens before moving to rural Scotland. "For fun, we'd buy a half-liter of vodka and ten packs of cigarettes and hide in the woods," he says. After moving to the States to study philosophy at Duke, Murdoch dropped out to follow a girlfriend to L.A. "I didn't have a plan at all," he says. "But suddenly the songwriting thing kind of clicked and I knew it was what I was supposed to do."

DIY GUY After DJ Nic Harcourt at tastemaking L.A. station KCRW started playing Murdoch's EP, the songwriter sold 50,000 copies and received several major-label offers. Ultimately, he decided to release Time Without Consequence on his own label, Zero Summer. "A record deal wasn't something I was interested in," he says. "There was no way anyone would let me make the record I wanted to make."

TV STAR "I don't have a TV, so I never saw any of them," says Murdoch of the dozen or so appearances "Orange Sky" has made on the small screen. "Actually, I did see The O.C.," he says. "The song came at the end during one of those montage sequences with people staring out the window and tears welling up. I have no idea why it's so popular with the TV people - maybe because there aren't a lot of words. People tell me all the time, 'My kid was watching The O.C.' . . . A lot of people discovered me that way." CHRISTIAN HOARD

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