I'm not entirely certain where I first encountered Zee Avi. All I know is that I've got a couple of Avi tracks in my "shuffle top-rated MP3s" playlist, and when they come on, they skewer me with her beautiful voice, like a young Peggy Lee by way of Bjork. Today, "No Christmas For Me" shuffled into my headphones and I sat transfixed by that angelic voice. It literally froze me where I sat. I'm on the road in the USA, which makes it basically impossible to buy downloadable music (Amazon UK's webstore won't sell MP3s to people with US IP addresses; Amazon US's MP3 store won't sell to people with UK credit-cards), but I found a handful of her MP3s from various song-of-the-day promo releases, and one of those was Swell Window, which I have since played twenty times in a row and am falling ever more deeply in love with.

Ms Avi, who hails from Malaysia, sells her CDs direct on her website, along with some rather lovely original artwork. She also has a deep and glorious YouTube channel (her career was launched when one of her YouTube uploads gained popularity). And if you're not caught in an Amazonian overseas travel payment snafu like me, you can buy her MP3s, too.

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I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: happy mutants • malaysia • music • videos • youtube

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http://www.kmoser.com kmoser

Did they forget to aim the camera at their faces?
Bodhipaksa Dharmacari

This is gorgeous. Thanks for posting.
- wrybread
  
  ^^^ what Bodhipaksa said.
  - awjt
    
    Yes, she’s fantastic!
http://twitter.com/onecooldana onefancydana

Zee Avi’s album “Ghostbird” is fantastic and I can’t recommend it enough. There’s even a full live-recorded version on her Youtube account!
bagoombah

Her song “Honey Bee” is absolutely stunning, even if it’s just a guitar in this version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t5RrUt3nrY
Matthew Balding

Aren’t these geographic restrictions absurd in the age of digital content?

For some reason the iTunes US store works fine with foreign IP addresses, it just wants a US credit card billing address. We live in Japan, and without any VPN fiddle, this is how we get all our content. Music is DRM-free, but not movies or TV shows.

If the UK iTunes store works the same way, maybe you could get your content that way while traveling. No Ubuntu though–you’re back to Windows or OS X.
http://twitter.com/ElPocho Eric Jasso

Catch her live if you can. We saw her two weeks ago and her voice is so wonderful. She connects with her audience so very well and projects such an aura. It was an amazing show.
Christian Jacobsen

Her voice reminds me of Jolie Holland’s first two albums, Escondida and Catalpa. If you like Zee Avi, I’d suggest you might like Jolie as well.

Zee Avi, skewered on an angelic voice

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