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Though they’re from the West Coast, Gran Ronde sounds as if they’d fit right in playing alongside Bloc Party or Interpol. The band’s debut album, Secret Rooms, shows off a melodic, post-punk sound with 11 tightly produced songs (including bonus track “Control”). “Wisdom” is one of the more upbeat singles, with its jangly guitars, catchy hooks, and sentimental lyrics about love lost.

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SLO-O skates over a classic Dr. Dre-style production with his crisp, laid-back flow. The San Francisco newcomer’s hazy tale about grinding on sleepless streets takes on added drama thanks to strings that sweep across a hypnotic keyboard riff. The song’s title references Eldridge Cleaver’s collection of essays and SLO-O proves he too has literary flare: “I walk with my soul on ice, on gasoline blocks, matchbook ready to strike, I’m trying to weave out.”

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Coining the new musical style called “anarcumbia”, Mexico’s Amandititita fuses modern cumbia beats with occasionally tongue-in-cheek, observational lyrics about life in Mexico. The songs on her self-titled debut contain all sorts of off-kilter pop songs including a tale about Mexico’s billionaire tycoon Carlos Slim and one track about a serial killer nurse. The one we’ve chosen to present is the futuristic, slightly satirical track about the singer and her metrosexual boyfriend and it’s called (no surprise) “Metrosexual”.

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A star of screens both small and large, Ximena Sariñana has also flirted with music throughout various periods in her young career. But the music contained on her official full-length debut, Mediocre is her most complete statement yet. Her individual songwriting style has a wounded jazzy style that is somewhere between Norah Jones and Fiona Apple, but she has a more evocative way of enunciating – and the instrumentation has a luscious, rock-edged feel.

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Working in front one of the all-time great crate-digger beats, Karina makes it easy to fall for her thoughtful, boom-bastic pop. Karina is a pianist/songwriter/teenager whose debut, First Love was produced by Tricky Stewart and The-Dream and has already gained a little bit of love thanks to the single “Sixteen @ War.”

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The Tennessee-born Whitney Duncan grew up listening to both the early rock ‘n’ roll of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis as well as modern country icons such as Tanya Tucker and Shania Twain. Now that she’s embarked on her own career at the age of 22, she’s able to fuse these elements of classic, rhythm-based guitar music and contemporary country pop. She’s got a strength in her voice which makes a song like “When I Said I Would” sound like a defiant classic.

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“Worrisome Heart” is the title track to the debut from the young vocalist Melody Gardot.  Gardot’s debut is out on Verve Records and the sound she conjures here is a good fit with that label’s classic recordings.  This is smoky vocal jazz with Gardot providing plenty of mystery and guile in the composition and vocal style.  She unfolds the song like a blues tune, focusing on repitition, but tells more with each line of the song.

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If you saw the film La Vie en Rose, then you’ve heard Jil Aigrot.  She was the singing voice of French vocal legend Edith Piaf in the film when Piaf’s original recordings weren’t used.  Award-winning actress Marion Cotillard then lip-synced to Aigrot’s renditions.  Aigrot’s uncanny approximation of Piaf’s phrasings and signature matieral is available on the album Word’s of Love, on which you’ll find this week’s free Discovery Download.

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Cut from the same singer-songwriter cloth as Jack Johnson and Jill Sobule, Tristan Prettyman applies a warm Carnauba wax to her acoustic California pop, then burnishes it to a deep glow. A troubadour in flip-flops, Prettyman’s sunny take on heartbreak, “Madly,” appears on her second album Hello.

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Emily Jane White is a twenty-something vocalist from the San Francisco Bay Area. “Time On Your Side” is from her album Dark Undercoat and it’s finger-picking folk tune underscored by White’s husky, slightly lonely vocals. It has the vibe of that “weird America” sound that many of us love here at iTunes but she trades in arcane mythical references for more concrete, lyrical poetry about life and loves.

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