Céu

Just when you think that Brazil must surely have exhausted its supply of irresistibly jazzy, funky, sexy, soulful electro-pop singer-songwriters, someone like

Her full name is Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças, but she goes by the simpler moniker CéU. It's a name that can be translated into English in a couple of subtly but significantly different ways. CéU means either "sky" or "heaven," depending on context, and either translation applies quite nicely in this case: think of her as "Sky" when you hear the soft blue clarity of her voice, or "Heaven" when one of her sweetly bubbling melodic hooks takes you by surprise and makes you shiver with delight.

The past year for CéU has been an exciting success story. CéU’s April 3, 2007 self-titled release on Six Degrees Records has sound scanned over 75,000 copies and scored unprecedented chart numbers for a Brazilian female artist -- #1 on Billboard’s World Music charts (cracking the nearly two-year domination of Celtic Women), #1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers (New Artist) Chart, and #57 on the Billboard Hot 100. She also received a Latin Grammy nomination for “best new artist” in 2006, and was the first international artist featured in the Starbucks Hear Music™ Debut series. CéU’s momentum continues to build with her beautiful album cover gracing the high-profile Apple iPhone commercials and her stunning 2007 Pan American Games opening ceremony performance becoming recognized worldwide.

The album opens enticingly with "Vinheta Quebrante," a brief introductory track that builds itself up in delicate rhythmic layers. With "Lenda," the album's first full-length track, CéU stakes out her musical territory more assertively: anchored by the juxtaposition of a subtly chromatic melody and a lazy funk groove and ornamented with a gracefully understated turntable scratch, the song sways seductively like seaweed in a warm ocean current, hints of reggae and dub lurking tantalizingly in the background. Next comes the album's first single, a sweetly tuneful and more explicitly reggae-flavored song titled "Malemolência" (if you're lucky enough to have satellite access to the TV Globo network, then you may recognize it as a featured song in the soundtrack to

But as intriguing as the musical arrangements are, it's CéU's voice that really grabs your attention and won't let go. On "Rainha," a jazzy and more conventionally Brazilian number, she delivers a beautifully cascading melody over rich, thick layers of horns and percussion, while on the drier and more bluesy "10 Contados" her voice whispers the melody softly and warmly into your ear with an almost unbearable sexiness. On every song, CéU croons with a warmth and sensuality that is much more interesting and complex than the warblings of the sex-kittens-of-the-month that perennially inhabit the American R&B charts; CéU sings as if she were imparting secrets. Her songs sound as if they're informed by life as it is really lived, in all of its emotional difficulty and complication, rather than by gauzy romantic illusions or sexpot posturing.