Kaki King, "Dreaming of Revenge"

Billboard

Kaki King plays her acoustic guitar like a drum set, literally tapping on it to create percussive sounds. But she also lays down foundational, virtuosic finger-picked or fret-slapped rhythmic patterns upon which she stacks everything from electric guitar and keyboard to bass, actual drums and, sometimes, vocals. One would expect a massive wall of sound, but King's arrangements are often airy and minimalist, evidenced best in the dusty, widescreen "Sad American" and the bouncy, urbane "Air and Kilometers." She uses pedal and lap steel to strong effect, sketching haunting portraits with "Montreal" and the climactic "2 O'Clock." While King's songs often hew closer to contemporary classical than pop, the patient listener will discern new colors in these lovely painted-desert landscapes with each listen.

City And Colour

Billboard

Dallas Green, who performs solo under the moniker City And Colour, says he only has one reason for making music: "I just want to write a better song."

Green, perhaps best known outside of his native Canada as a singer and guitarist in post-hardcore/screamo band Alexisonfire, has been writing music since he was 16.

"But I don't necessarily write one type of song," Green tells Billboard.com. "And I had all these acoustic songs I'd written that were never used for anything. I didn't know what to do with them."

A few years back, Green finally decided to record some of those songs "just for myself, just to have them on tape. That was the original idea." But with the encouragement of manager Joel Carriere (who also runs Dine Alone Records, the label City And Colour calls home), Green ended up cutting an EP from those solo studio recordings. "And then it snowballed," Green says.

A debut full-length called "Sometimes" appeared in 2005, which led to a People's Choice Favorite Canadian Artist award at the 2006 MuchMusic Video Awards and, eventually, a 2007 JUNO award for alternative album of the year.

Despite the acclaim, Green says a certain group of Alexisonfire fans rejected his gentle, country- and folk-inflected solo material. "There were those people who thought the whole project was contrived, that it was put together because it would sell more records and be more appealing to a wider audience than Alexis," Green explains. "But I can't help what kind of songs come out of me.

"Anyway," he adds, "I don't expect everyone to like everything I do. All I can hope for is that somebody gets it."

And clearly, the detractors are in the minority. The new City And Colour album, "Bring Me Your Love," which hit streets Feb. 11, debuted March 1 in the No. 11 spot on Top Heatseekers, earning Green his first solo chart ink.

Written in less than a year and a half -- mostly while on tour with Alexis -- "Bring Me" is a "snapshot of where I was at one particular time," according to Green. "That's really what separates it from the first album. 'Sometimes' was written over a span of 10 years, with no plan behind it. I had a vision this time."

With musings on everything from his own insomnia to death, Carriere says what unifies "Bring Me" is the quality of the songwriting. "It's a little bit country, it's a little bit folk, it's a little bit rock –- it's a fusion. But if there's one thing Canadians do well, it's write a good song."

With the album done, Green now turns his attention to getting the "Bring Me" material onto the stage. He appeared at the South By Southwest music festival this week and then plays his first U.S. club shows as a solo artist with bi-coastal performances at the Knitting Factory. In April, it's on to Europe, while May has him criss-crossing Canada.

From there, Green says he'll play it by ear. "I don't really decide when it's time to make an Alexis song and when it's time to make a City And Colour song. I just never stop playing guitar. I'm always working on writing a better song."

Digital Sales Boom For Post-Super Bowl Petty

Billboard

The New York Giants weren't the only ones to come away from Super Bowl XLII with a storybook ending. Artists who were tied into the game either through live performance or inclusion in advertisements also notched impressive victories, especially on the digital front.

Leading the charge, perhaps unsurprisingly: halftime show stars Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, who performed four of their best-known songs in a well-received 12-minute set. With more than 97 million viewers tuned in to the game -- the most in Super Bowl history -- Petty and his band dominated the ultimate platform for reaching consumers.

This issue, the group finds itself at the summit of Billboard's Top Pop Catalog chart with "Greatest Hits," which shot up 196% in the week following the Super Bowl with sales of 33,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Meanwhile, the band's "Anthology: Through the Years" jumped 240% to 7,000, taking the No. 6 spot on the same chart.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Petty collects his biggest trophy this issue for halftime show entry "Free Fallin'": The track shifted 63,000 digital copies, a gain of 305%, and bows at No. 10 on Hot Digital Songs. "I Won't Back Down," "American Girl" and "Runnin' Down a Dream," which made up the rest of Petty's halftime set, all registered similarly notable climbs in the digital realm.

Mike Davis, executive VP/GM of Universal Music Enterprises, which controls Petty's early catalog, says that advance preparation -- especially online -- was key to ensuring the best possible sales outcome.

"A huge part of our marketing was online-based," Davis says. "With big television events, the online aspect is so important because people can see [the performance] happen onscreen and then immediately react and buy it online. With so much music being bought online now anyway, it's an easy bull's-eye to market to."

Davis says iTunes was the biggest account on "Greatest Hits" and notes that 12,000 out of the 33,000 units shifted this week (or 36%) were digital.

But Universal was prepared at retail, too. "We were endcapped and positioned at every single account," he says. "We had ramp-up on this."

"Greatest Hits" actually broke the top 10 on Top Pop Catalog several weeks before the game, and Davis says those results were "mostly driven by retail and Super Bowl bumpers telling people that Tom Petty would be performing." In the past 10 weeks, the set climbed the chart 98-83-79-40-34-19-6-6-2-1.

The Whigs, "Mission Control"

Billboard

The dizzying tom-tom runs and shining buzz-saw guitar blasts that launch "Mission Control" opener "Like a Vibration" demand you sit up and take notice, but it's the track's pop hook heart and Parker Gispert's guy-next-door voice that make the two-and-a-half-minute sprint stick. Therein lays the beauty of the Whigs: not only is the band mercifully unpretentious, its power-trio format means the tunes are refreshingly uncluttered, allowing clear-as-a-bell melodies room to breathe. Even excursions into psych-country ("Sleep Sunshine") and horn-backed roots rock ("I Got Ideas") never feel gimmicky. Taking pages out of some very strong playbooks (think Superchunk, Guided by Voices, early Wilco), the Whigs find a way to revive honest-to-goodness pop rock for a new generation.

PJ Harvey, "White Chalk"

Billboard

On which PJ Harvey unstraps her guitar, sits down at a piano and completely reinvents her sound, creating a quiet masterpiece in the process. Seven proper albums into her career, she confronts less directly many of the themes that have defined her work—sex, love, betrayal—and instead focuses on what's left after all the damage has been done: an "empty" and "insignificant" life. This is no warm nostalgia trip down memory lane, but rather an offering to those the narrator has lost, either literally or figuratively, so she may ask "forgiveness." Essentially one long suicide note, the concept likely would have failed in less accomplished hands. But Harvey's mostly bare arrangements, stark vocal delivery and razor-sharp lyrics add up to a poignant, haunting rumination on what makes—and breaks—a life.

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

Billboard

Sharon Jones often hears people remark that "nobody makes good soul music anymore." She's got a message for those people: "We do."

Jones and the band she plays with, the Dap-Kings, have been churning out deliciously rich, retro-tinged, funk-influenced soul since the mid-'90s. But in one of those cruel twists of fate that seem so common to the music biz, it wasn't until the much-hyped -- and much younger -- British neo-soul singer Amy Winehouse used the Dap-Kings as her backing band on sophomore smash "Back to Black" that the industry at large really took notice of Jones and her longtime collaborators.

But the warm, big-hearted Jones isn't holding any grudges. "Some people have been trying to start a fight between me and Amy. A lot of the media have been trying to set it up that way. But I give thanks to Amy," she says. "Me and the band were moving on up on our own and we've gotten plenty of places -- but she put us in that mainstream."

Jones also has nothing but kind words for Mark Ronson, the "Back to Black" producer who brought the Dap-Kings to Winehouse's attention. "He knew what kind of sound he wanted for her and he knew where to find it," Jones says. "It was our sound they needed."

Jones started singing, as so many of the great soul singers do, when she was a young girl in church. Although she lived in New York with her mother most of the time, Jones spent third grade in the South with her father. That year, Jones says, "My sisters made me play an angel at church at Christmas. They made me a halo and wings and I sang ‘Silent Night' and people said, ‘That little girl can sing.' I knew since then I had it in me."

Throughout the late '70s and '80s Jones searched for her big break, but never quite got it. "I was always told I was too dark-skinned, I was too fat and, once I was past 25, I was too old," she recalls.

She worked odd jobs to make ends meet, including a two-year stint at New York's Rikers Island prison and four years as an armed security guard for Wells Fargo.

The musical horizon finally brightened for Jones in 1995 when she met Bosco Mann (a.k.a. Gabriel Roth) — producer, bassist for the Dap-Kings and co-founder of Daptone Records. He was looking for a singer for the band to back, and she was looking for a band. Jones says she initially wondered whether the "young white boys" of the Dap-Kings could really get down, but when she heard them play, her jaw "hit the floor. They had it," she says, and they've been working their funky soul magic together ever since.

Thrilling live shows and two full-length releases — 2002's "Dap Dippin' with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings" and 2005's "Naturally" — gained the group a dedicated following. But it's their new "100 Days, 100 Nights," released Oct. 2, that is taking Jones and her crew to the next level. The album earned Jones her first chart ink, debuting at No. 3 on Top Heatseekers and No. 194 on The Billboard 200.

The results have Jones floating on a natural high. "I've been out here doing this a long time. I'm 51 now, so it's nice to know I'm finally getting heard in the mainstream. I'm just really excited," she gushes. "This project with the Dap-Kings is 12 years in the making, and all we've wanted is to be recognized."

Kevin Wortis, co-founder of World's Fair Entertainment, which manages Daptone Records, says there's no reason Jones "can't be a new star at 51. She's got the soul, she's got the talent. And the industry is changing. Sharon was always told she didn't fit the model. But the model has shifted," Wortis says. "The industry has had to shift to survive, and what matters now is finding artists that resonate. And that includes Sharon."

Wortis says he and Daptone will keep the momentum going by having Jones and the Dap-Kings stay on the road well into 2008. The group is currently in Europe, but returns to the States in November for a cross-country tour.

Jones is also acting and singing in a new Denzel Washington-directed movie called "The Great Debaters," which is due out on Christmas Day.

And don't be surprised to see Jones on daytime TV soon, too. Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Films produced "The Great Debaters," and Jones says she now has her eye on the TV talk queen's show. "I'm praying that I get to meet Oprah. I want her to hear me singing. That's my next goal."

But Jones isn't stopping there. "I'm going to do this till my body can't do this no more," she says. "I've just got to."

Amen.

Nicole Atkins

Billboard

Nicole Atkins hails from the quaint seaside borough of Neptune City, N.J., population 5,218. But her Colombia debut "Neptune City," named in honor of her beloved hometown, was recorded in a land better known for its ski slopes than sunbathing: Sweden.

Atkins met producer Tore Johansson just in the nick of time. She'd been signed to Columbia in January 2006 by Steve Greenberg, but a change at the top meant much of the team Atkins had been working with disappeared right in the middle of the making of her first album. On top of that, she had been recording with Lenny Kaye, of the Patti Smith Group, who ended up having to give up the helm to turn his attention to Smith's new album.

"I started getting worried about getting dropped," she tells Billboard.com. "A million people had left and I wasn't sure what [Columbia] was going to do with me."

Atkins felt she'd lost a lot of time as "another summer just slipped by." But after having the pick of her next producer, she innately knew Johansson would be the one to help get her vision on tape. "He spoke my language -- children and dolls and creepy and beautiful things."

She headed off with her band to his native Sweden in September of last year and began working on what would become the rich, dreamy "Neptune City," which debuted at No. 20 on Top Heatseekers.

Atkins says they spent two weeks working, took a break, and then continued for the whole month of November last year.

"We were in the middle of nowhere," she recalls. "The studio was a half-hour from anything. We were in the middle of a field, in an old barn. It was dark out all the time."

Although Atkins says she often felt homesick and depressed -- "You would not have wanted to know me at that time," she only half-jokes -- she also credits the cold, barren environment with helping maintain "good focus. All you had was the studio to lose yourself in."

Of the tunes that made the final cut, Atkins says "about a third were songs I had done for my demo, a third were songs I'd done with the band earlier that year and a third were new songs I wrote just before I got to Sweden or while I was there."

The tracks written in Sweden -- including one of the album's highlights, "Brooklyn's on Fire!" -- capture Atkins' mindset at the time, reminiscing about home and the people she missed.

But there was a beauty in the depth of the band's isolation in Sweden that found its way into Atkins' music, which ultimately helped to enhance the final product. "The landscape really inspired me to go for something dark and psychedelic," she says. Her dark pop songs have a baroque, Beach Boys-styled '60s feel, juxtaposed with sinister sounds "because of where we were, mentally and physically."

Currently on tour with the Raveonettes, Atkins says she's grateful for how "Neptune City" turned out and for all the opportunities she's been granted to travel and see the world.

But ultimately, her focus comes back to home. "I'm in Asbury Park [N.J.] now, and a lot of my friends in bands are living here now, too. We're trying to create a scene again, to make it a viable music town again. The roots go deep.

Ayo

Billboard

"Even when I was child, in days when it wasn't easy, I used to smile a lot," says Ayo. "I think it's because my parents gave me the name they did. A name becomes like a guide -- it's something very strong."

Ayo was born Joy Olasunmibo Ogunmakin in Cologne, Germany, in September 1980 to a Nigerian father and Romani -- or gypsy -- mother. Ayo, which translates as "joy" in the Nigerian language of Yoruba, was a nickname her father had given her as a child.

"Later, I had a friend," Ayo recounts, "who always used to call me 'Joyful.' And it fit. I am joyful. I love to laugh."

But Ayo, who ultimately decided to title her debut album "Joyful," explains that emotion as something far more complex than happiness. "People will listen to the album and may at first wonder, 'OK, what is joyful here?' But it's joyful because there's a lot of hope. I believe when there's hope there's joy, and I do have a lot of hope."

That hope reveals itself most fully in Ayo's rich yet ethereal voice, which seems pulled from somewhere deep within, profoundly soulful, yet shimmers as if it has emerged almost fully intact, unscathed.

And in many ways that unique sound represents the journey of the singer herself. At around the age of 6, Ayo's mother became addicted to heroin, which led the family into poverty and then fueled her parents' divorce. Thereafter, Ayo and her siblings spent periods of time in and out of foster care, until her father was finally granted sole parenting rights when Ayo was 14.

But Ayo says music has been her "therapy" since she was a child, allowing her to stay positive and optimistic instead of falling into despair. "What I share in my music is from my experience. I need to tell the truth. I'm not a good liar, anyway," she tells Billboard.com. "And I believe that only if you stay ho you really are, can you bring something new and meaningful to the people. It doesn't matter if you are black or white; our feelings are the same. As long as we share our true emotions, we can all connect."

And Ayo's music, which draws upon and deftly blends the varied sounds of her youth -- reggae, soul, folk, jazz and rock -- is most certainly connecting. "Joyful" was released in Europe in 2006 on Polydor and bowed in the 'States in November via Interscope, debuting at No. 16 on the Top Heatseekers chart.

Currently serving as opener on tour with Babyface, Ayo recently brought an unsuspecting crowd at New York's Nokia Theater to its feet after she capped a spirited set with the heart-wrenching standout "Down on My Knees."

It was a fitting reception for Ayo who, after spending several years in London and then Paris, is now living full-time in the Big Apple.

"I believe so much in energy," she says, "and I love the energy of New York. It's so stimulating. It's good for your mind and your soul."

With a dedicated following already established in Europe, Ayo now aims to build momentum stateside. "I hope I'm going to reach people and touch people here, because I believe in people more than in record companies. People will find you and share with you because they want to, not because it's all hyped up by some label. They don't want the hype. You need to create something that's bigger than just a business thing, because in the end, that connection you make is not in the record label's hands, it's in the universe's hands."

And Ayo wants to create something that is lasting. "People joke with me and say, 'Haven't you gotten everything out of your system? Haven't you already said everything in your lyrics?' But I tell them I'm still in therapy, I still need sessions -- it's not over yet. I still have a lot more to say."