Artists to Watch: Ten Artists and Bands Who Are Bringing the Future of Music, Today

WHO Last April, the future looked bleak for Kate Nash. She'd been rejected twice from college and was slinging jeans at a chain boutique in London when a spill down the stairs left her with a broken foot. "I couldn't face another year of rubbish jobs," she says. Laid up in bed with a laptop and a guitar, Nash posted demos to her MySpace page. One caught the ear of Lily Allen, who bumped Nash into her Top Eight. The boost launched a frenzy of comparisons — "Can everyone please stop calling Kate Nash the next Lily Allen?" Allen pleaded on her blog — but it helped Nash's debut album, Made of Bricks, hit Number One in the U.K. It's due stateside in January.

SOUND Nash lambasts misbehaving boyfriends over breezy piano and acoustic guitar. And she doesn't mince words: "Why you being a dickhead for?" she spits at one dude. Nash, who studied at the same performing-arts high school as Amy Winehouse, says she sees herself as a storyteller, and her raconteur chops are especially sharp on "Foundations," where she chastises her sloppy-drunk crush for puking on her new sneakers. True story? "Actually, it was me — I threw up on my friend's shoes!" she admits.

KEY TRACK "Foundations" Nash makes dude-dissing fun on this bouncy cut, airing boyfriend grievances over sunny piano pop.

STAR-STRUCK Nash, who still lives with her parents, is resisting the celebrity vortex. She even nixed an invite to Björk's Halloween party. "I feel like an outsider looking in on all these celebrities," she says. "I would just be in the corner getting drunk." NICOLE FREHSÉE

Photograph by Clair Nash

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