Who? From the rolling hills of San Francisco emerges California's latest offering to the neo-folk canon, in the form of 26-year-old Emily Jane White and a ghostly charisma that sets her starkly apart from peers like Brightblack Morning Light. A former UC Santa Cruz student, a four-track demo recording of White's sparse, smoldering tales caught the attention of Oakland indie label Double Negative Records, which released her debut album, Dark Undercoat this month. She also recorded the title track for Cam Archer's 2006 coming-of-age flick Wild Tigers I Have Known.

What's the Deal? It's plenty tempting to name Cat Power as White's closest sonic contemporary, but for all her songwriting skill Chan Marshall can't evoke the blunt isolation that makes it easy to imagine White singing solo in an empty country chapel at the end of a dirt road. Accompanied by guitar and occasionally piano, White's laments make it clear she's taken a couple stabs in the heart -- "You close the coffin on everything I've said" on "Dagger" -- but there are also rays of optimism on the hero ode "Bessie Smith" and the jaunty "Time On Your Side".

Fun Fact: Her current output might not suggest it, but some of White's first musical explorations came as a member of punk and metal bands in college. She later branched off with her own group called Diamond Star Halos, and made her biggest leaps as a writer during a post-college trip to Bordeaux, France. 

Now Hear This
Emily Jane White - "Sleeping Dead" DOWNLOAD MP3

On the Web:
Emily Jane White at MySpace
emilyjanewhite.com

Talk: Day or night -- when is the best time to hear Emily Jane White's tales of torment?