Blue Roses

At seventeen, Yorkshire singer/songwriter Laura Groves, recording under the name Blue Roses, first started composing material. Equally skilled on guitar and piano, she crafts fluid vocals, dreamlike imagery, and serpentine melodies that have invited parallels to venerated songstresses Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush as well as highly lauded contemporaries like Joanna Newsom and Bat for Lashes. Her self-produced, eponymous debut took shape through guerilla-style sessions scattered across assorted homes, bedrooms, and baths, along with a prized Steinway located in a neighborhood piano shop whose keys were soon removed to amuse the affluent guests of an upscale hotel. XL Recordings issued Blue Roses in April 2009.