On their debut album The Perfect Crime, Magnolia Memoir lays into a groove that would be equally at home in the beat era club scene of 1950's San Francisco, the dark-night-of-the-soul Berlin cabaret of the 1920's, and the post millennial tribal gathering of Burning Man. It is, quite simply, a new dimension in alternative pop.

Magnolia Memoir is fronted by songwriter-vocalist Mela Lee, whose stunning style and five-octave range will put you in mind of a whole lot of the greats but in the end sound like no one but herself. Her partner in the perfect crime is multi-instrumentalist Alexander Burke, whose resume includes a stint as musical director for Chicago's Second City comedy troupe, and an appearance on Margaret Cho's Grammy-nominated Cho Dependent alongside the likes of Fiona Apple and Grant Lee Phillips.