Jesca Hoop

"We wanted to make sure that our inexperience showed," says Jesca Hoop about her entrancing debut album, Kismet. "This album was a process of discovery, and this is what that discovery sounds like. I wanted to hear something new, so I made what I think is something new – or fresh to my ears, anyway. I made the record that I wanted to hear. That was my motivation."

Indeed, Kismet is filled with continually unfolding discoveries – from the shimmering wonder of "Summertime," its lustrous opening track, to the off-kilter elegance of "Love and Love Again," which brings it to a swooning close. Each of the album’s eleven song wanders into surprising sonic places – woozy keyboards, pop riffs that turn themselves surreally inside out, lyrics that flirt with multiple meanings and refuse to settle in any one spot. The result is a shifting, dreamlike atmosphere in which everything follows an internal logic that makes perfect sense for the length of each song, and then evaporates as the next song begins to take its equally individual shape. The album is seductive, fun and entirely mesmerizing.

How it came to be is a story in itself. Hoop was raised a Mormon, but eventually left that world behind to create her own path – and her own visionary worlds. She traveled in the West – California, Wyoming, Arizona – and, finally, worked for five years as nanny to the children of Tom Waits and his wife, Kathleen Brennan. Hoop had already been writing songs and performing with a band, and Waits took an interest in her songs. Through him, an early version of "Seed of Wonder" made its way to Lionel Conway who in turn gave it to Nic Harcourt, the musically adventurous and influential host of "Morning Becomes Eclectic," on KCRW in Santa Monica. Harcourt began playing the song, and it became one of the most requested tracks in the station’s history.