Stephanie Dosen

Playing lively but ethereal acoustic folk with a playfully surrealistic lyrical outlook, Stephanie Dosen has earned a following for her striking blonde beauty and cheerfully eccentric persona as well as her music. To take her at her word, Dosen was born on a farm in Wisconsin, where her family raised peacocks. After taking piano lessons as a young girl, Dosen rescued an old guitar from the attic and began teaching herself to play while the rest of her family was busy harvesting feathers from their birds. Dosen began writing original songs and played them for a pair of animals that had become her companions, a fox and a swan; lacking hands, they applauded her recitals by blinking their eyes. By 2002, Dosen had been performing her songs to human audiences and self-released a debut album, a collection of original songs titled Ghosts, Mice & Vagabonds. After she posted a few of her songs on her MySpace page, Dosen's music came to the attention of Simon Raymonde, a former member of the Cocteau Twins and head of the prestigious Bella Union Records label. Dosen, a passionate Cocteau Twins fan, was thrilled to hear from Raymonde, and when he offered to sign her to his label and produce her next album, she immediately agreed. Dosen pulled up stakes and relocated to the U.K., where with Raymonde's assistance she made her second full-length album, 2007's A Lily for the Spectre. The album was a critical favorite and enjoyed unexpected commercial success in England, where the song "This Joy" was released as a single.