2007 Hot Issue

HOT CHANTEUSE: Emily Jane White

Thanks to Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and a billion bearded dudes with guitars, California's new folk movement is already blowing up. But now Emily Jane White is bringing the darker side to that scene. The twenty-six-year-old Northern California native's debut CD comes alive with enough gothic imagery for an Edgar Allan Poe novel. On Dark Undercoat, White pierces her characters with bullets ("Two Shots to the Head"), sticks them with voodoo pins ("Hole in the Middle") and pushes them into blades ("Dagger"). The twist is that with her woeful delivery, the violence is more cathartic than cruel. "All these death metaphors are just the different elements of life," she says.

Dark Undercoat's sparse tracks unfold at a reflective pace, with White's plaintive croon draped over minimal guitar, piano and percussion arrangements. Cat Power is the easiest modern comparison to her melancholy balladry, but White's heroes range from PJ Harvey to Emmylou Harris to Poison Ivy of the Cramps, and the album kicks off with an ode to legendary blues queen Bessie Smith. White wrote the song in response to the common rumor that Smith died because an all-white hospital refused to treat her following a car accident. "Death is at the heart of the blues, and her blues is so old you can feel it," says White.

Dark Undercoat also pays homage to everyday heroes. White wrote "Wild Tigers I Have Known" for Cam Archer's movie of the same name, a Gus Van Sant-produced portrait of a gay teenager struggling to put his desires into action. "The song was a way for me to connect with the heartbreak of that experience," she says. "When you decide to go deep with darkness, you also unearth pieces of gold." --JENNIFER MAERZ

LISTEN: "Wild Tigers I Have Known"