It becomes self-evident the moment you hear her sing the very first note of her very first album. The song is entitled “Like A Star,” and it's a slice of sublime blues delivered with a voice that pins you, in the softest but most persuasive of ways, to the wall; a voice that floats up effortlessly, full of caress, subtlety and the very purest quality. It’s the voice of Corinne Bailey Rae, and she was born to do this.

"I started off singing in church, I suppose, but people think it must have been a gospel church because of the whole, you know, black assumption," she says in reference to her mixed-race background. (Her father is West Indian, her mother English.) "But it wasn't gospel at all, it was just your regular church, very middle-class, where we would sing these harmonies every Sunday. It was always my favorite part of the service, the singing."

A move to a down-at-the-heels Baptist church followed, where the choir alternated between traditional hymns and wilder worship songs. The experience broadened Corinne’s tastes and when her youth leader offered to buy her an electric guitar she grabbed the opportunity, quite literally, with both hands. So began her love affair with making music, and she soon developed a healthy appetite for one of the most innovative bands that rock and roll had to offer, namely, Led Zeppelin.

"I loved that band during my teens," she says. "I wanted, somehow, to follow in their footsteps, and to create music of my own."

This she has duly done. Her self-titled debut album – which entered the U.K. album chart at #1 and has elicited four-star reviews from Q Magazine and London’s Times – is full of tiptoeing delicacy and wraparound warmth, merging the spirit of Billie Holiday with the statuesque soul of Erykah Badu. Even a cursory listen will tell you that its creator is something rather special.

Corinne Bailey Rae was born and raised in Leeds, England. The eldest of three daughters, she studied classical violin at school, but any ambitions to take this to a higher level were quickly scotched when the aforementioned Zeppelin fixation took hold. At 15, Corinne, influenced by female-led, indie noiseniks like Veruca Salt and L7, started her own band, named Helen. After attracting considerable local attention, Helen was offered a deal by Roadrunner Records. All was going well – until the bassist got pregnant and the band imploded.

"Disappointed? I was gutted," Bailey Rae says now. "I had no idea what to do next."

She went off to Leeds University where she studied English literature and spent evenings working as a modern-day hatcheck girl at a nearby jazz club. Every now and then she was allowed to sing with the band, and from those evenings new ideas began to form. Thus her songwriting evolved from noisy indie fare to more soulful, solo terrain.

"I love classic songs because they are so pure and succinct,” she says. “That's what I try to do with my own songs. They are short and sweet, to the point. I like the idea of leaving people wanting more, not less, you know?"

Inspired as much by Björk and Massive Attack as, say, Jill Scott, she went into the studio and came up with her debut album. It is in Bailey Rae’s own words, "a little bit of everything: it's chilled out, acoustic, kooky, atmospheric and soulful.”

And if she writes about the staple of all great soul songs – love – then she does so with less emphasis on its pink fluffiness than its unwritten complexities and numerous challenges. "I'm interested in the things that no one ever tells you about in relationships, about how love works in terms of expectation versus reality," she says. Because of this, songs like “Till It Happens To You,” “Like A Star” and “Choux Pastry Heart’” are unusually intimate, sparkling with keen observations and a disarming honesty.

"The response so far has been amazing," says Bailey Rae, "and that has been very satisfying, because all this feels so right to me. Writing songs – playing music – is, I know, precisely what I should be doing with my life."