The Reader  - Omaha, NE

Pick of the Week

In 2003 California’s Jessica Peters struck sonic gold with her debut release Blue Cotton Skin, an album that finds the artist sporting a different style than she once played in coffee shops and restaurants around Santa Barbara, Calif. Bored with her own folk-song underpinning, Peters took a year off from performing, hunkered down at home with a Nord Lead keyboard and ancient effects rack, then emerged with a product accurately self-described as “a dreamy, low-fi, intimate, electric, organic little album.” Critics have taken a more direct approach, comparing Peters — who performs under the name of her music-loving great-grandfather, a Russian immigrant — to such artists as Aimee Mann, Björk, Beth Orton, Portishead and Sparklehorse.

- Michael Freidson