Seriously tho. Kaki King has a strong bid as one of the greatest guitarists of the current musical generation. One of my personal favorite songwriters as well. This is just what she writes on a Tuesday morning at 3 AM and goes and plays for a crowd in Italy that only half understands what she's saying. Just invents a new way to use a guitar and writes this amazing Asian influenced song, and in months it's on her album that uses a different guitar for every track. Here's her at the same performance taking Elliott Smith's "Angeles" to a whole new level with tons of guitar flourishes worked into the already difficult main melody. And those songs are like a 4, maybe a 5 on the scale of how difficult some of her music is. She blows me away as both a guitarist and songwriter. Seeing her is like a guitar exhibition, she pulls out all these crazy custom made guitars that all sound totally different and just plays the shit out of all of them. Whenever some new effect or mod to an acoustic guitar gets produced, she's often one of the first to be given a prototype to test it out and sometimes you'll see these prototypes for the first time at her shows, long before they're released in music stores. She can do amazing folk songs, she's great with indie rock jams with a lot of layers, she can play classical, she can play percussively (and pretty much no one can touch her ability to play guitar in that style), she can shred to punk and metal, and she's even her own drummer on most of her albums and damn good at that too. I've seen her 5 times and it's usually the best show I went to that year.
I've only listened once, but my first impression is that it's really really good. Definitely on par with Loom.
I know it's WAY late, but my gf has gotten super into Tori Amos lately. Other similar artists "worth checking out"?
It's a lot but I back prob 70% of these. http://www.mtv.com/artists/tori-amos/related-artists/?filter=similar
speaking of Richard X I think I somehow haven't talked about his work with Annie here which is perfect pop music
Let's Eat Grandma Very unusual pop music but it's the best. Never thought I'd enjoy someone rapping about having bubble gum stuck to their trainers. Everyone should check this out.
I just recently started listening to The Kills and they're so great. This song has been on repeat for a week straight