The coolest pop songstress of the New Year

If you’re looking for a lesson in how radically rock music has evolved this decade, Basia Bulat’s cover of “Someday”

If you’re looking for a lesson in how radically rock music has evolved this decade, Basia Bulat’s cover of “Someday” is an excellent crash course. As originally recorded by the Strokes, the circa-2001 quintet in denim jackets and skinny jeans, the song was an exercise in hip artifice and studied weariness. As reinterpreted by Bulat with a single acoustic guitar, it becomes a perfect example of her intimate, exuberant pop, which brims with an irresistible sincerity.

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That same unpretentious spirit is everywhere to be found on Bulat’s debut album, Oh, My Darling. (Already a hit in Europe and Japan, it’s out in the U.S. on 2/5.) Like her fellow Canadian singer-songwriter Leslie Feist, Bulat is perfectly at home singing both small, carefully observed pop ditties and big, emotionally ambitious ballads. And if there’s any justice, she won’t have to hawk MP3 players to become a Stateside hit.

HEAR songs from Oh, My Darling at Basia Bulat’s MySpace page

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The coolest pop songstress of the New Year