Dido is becoming a success the old-fashioned way: emerging, not erupting, building her fan base over the past year listener by listener, with music that is striking a chord instead of simply reaching a market. There is a familiar quality to her debut disc, No Angel, which is not to say it sounds like something else -- maybe it's just that the album is so invitingly warm and intimate you immediately want to cozy up to it. Yet the pleasures of her album aren't fleeting; her sound is mysterious and multi-layered enough to make you want to linger and explore. Some critics have compared her to label-mate Sarah McLachlan, but Dido's tracks have a more urban, electronic edge, with some dubby effects borrowed from Faithless, the trip-hopping band where she got her start. Dido's work is perhaps closer to the 21st Century folk music of fellow British singer-songwriter Beth Orton, where a sampler can be the perfect complement to an acoustic guitar.

Even if you haven't actually listened to No Angel yet, it's been hovering just under your unconscious radar. Her single, "Here With Me," is the appropriately foreboding theme song to the sci-fi series, Roswell. Her romantic morning-after ballad, "Thank You," with its gentle percussion grooves and subtly celtic feel, was borrowed by Eminem, of all people, for "Stan," one of the more chillingly effective tracks on his controversial current album. Eminem may have pissed off a lot of people, but Dido's not complaining: some of the unlikeliest people have sought out her work thanks to him, abetting the growing chart success of No Angel. Maybe he had heard "Thank You" on the soundtrack to the Gwyneth Paltrow romantic comedy, Sliding Doors, where it first appeared.

Dido wasn't exactly groomed to be a pop star, and for a time she seriously followed in her father's footsteps as a literary agent. As a child, she was enrolled in the Guild Hall School of Music and Drama in her native London, where she studied violin, piano, and recorder. She didn't consider singing until she heard Ella Fitzgeraldand fell in love with Ella's vocal jazz. But it was brother Rollo who proved to be her unwitting mentor. It was his pop records that educated her in the ways of punk, dub, and dance music. And it was during his studio sessions for the first Faithless record, Reverence -- during which she hung about hoping the scheduled vocalists wouldn't show -- that she finally got the chance to sing professionally. For Rollo, it was a matter of his kid sister helping out in a pinch; for Dido, it was the start of a career.

Clive Davis agreed: after seeing Dido with Faithless, he offered her a solo deal. And Rollo, who had found an international audience for the multi-million-selling Reverence, was ultimately impressed enough to co-produce half of the album with Dido and co-write a few haunting tracks, including the subtly soulful "Honestly O.K," which echoes with evocative electronic effects. But No Angel is not merely a detour from Faithless; it's about an artist finding her own voice -- and about the world, slowly but surely, discovering it too.

- Michael Hill