Portishead
Portishead singer Beth Gibbon is like the Billie Holiday of trip-hop, with an unmistakable, cigarette-stained voice and an unforgettable delivery that teetered between anguish and ennui. The English group put out its debut disc, Dummy, with little fanfare but proceeded to entrance the world with moody tracks like "Sour Times" and "Glory Box." That success inspired countless imitators, none of whom could quite capture Portishead's blend of austere dance beats and exquisite misery.

Beth Orton
Beth Orton has the voice of a classic English folk singer, but her approach has been absolutely modern: vocalizing on Chemical Brothers' tracks; engaging Ray Of Light producer William Orbit (before Madonna did, mind you) to add gently spacy touches to her debut, Trailer Park; and letting beat-happy Ben Watt of Everything But the Girl remix one of tracks from her excellent followup, Central Reservation. Like Dido, she knows how to create a striking aural atmosphere around otherwise straightforward songs.

Saint Etienne
They've been a pop group, a dance combo, a techno outfit, but mostly this decade-old English threesome have made beautiful, delightfully unclassifiable records employing any sort of sound known to man or machine that they damn well fancy. Their earliest efforts, like Foxbase Alpha, were whimsical and funny; Saint Etienne's latest album, Sound Of Water, is sophisticated and just a trifle melancholy, a combination that Dido would appreciate.

Dot Allison
She was the singer for a very promising Scottish dance-rock band called One Dove who enjoyed fifteen minutes of mid-nineties fame on 120 Minutes for a stunning single called "One Love." Then they disappeared. After guesting on records like Death In Vegas's In Contino, Dot Allison reemerged as a solo artist with her aptly titled Afterglow in which the beats are hypnotic, the edges softened, and the vocals, especially on tracks like "Tommorrow Never Comes" and "Morning Sun," are dreamy and affecting.