On One Cell In The Sea, Alison Sudol allows the listener inside her often-fantastical world, revealing her inner life via songs Harp magazine praised as “fraught, haunted and beautiful.” Fronted by 21-year-old singer/pianist Alison Sudol, A Fine Frenzy’s songs are ethereal, the musical and lyrical vision is as thoughtful and delightful as Sudol herself. Born in Seattle and raised in Los Angeles, Sudol found solace in music early on immersing herself in a wide variety of artists and sounds from Ella Fitzgerald, Radiohead and Philip Glass to the classic 60s Motown sound. Sudol’s sensibilities also run literary tastes, including the graceful prose of Jane Austen and the quirky, surreal tales of Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis – in fact, the band’s name, A Fine Frenzy is nicked from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The captivating and hypnotizing result of years of yearning to express herself is One Cell in the Sea. Produced by Lukas Burton (Paul McCartney, James Blunt, Dido), her debut album includes such sterling songs as “Near to You,” a spare yet hopeful tune about a new love in the shadow of an old and the rollicking “Lifesize.” Those are balanced beautifully by the delicate, lingering vulnerability of “Almost Lover,” the first single, and the bop-along but soaring “Think of You.” At once surreal and so real, A Fine Frenzy and One Cell In The Sea is a delightful contradiction of lush Technicolor dreaminess, souls stripped bare, quirky Lynchian vividness and picket-fence innocence. But enough about Sudol, because “at the end, it’s about the music, not about me,” as she explain swhy she opted to use the name A Fine Frenzy. And that’s exactly what you expect to hear from someone whose sometimes otherworldly and fragile-seeming songs belie a mindful, engaging and conscientious artist.

Catch A Fine Frenzy on the season premiere of CSI:NY.

"Almost Lover" Video