Much as Judy Henske deserves a full post in this thread (no less so than Melissa Etheridge, or Shirley Manson, or Jann Arden, or Janis Ian, or Neneh Cherry, or Suzanne Vega, or even Patti Smith), my contribution will be
Thea Gilmore.
She falls pretty squarely into the alternative pop category, though she's been called "punk folk." Most of what she does is built around an acoustic guitar and her voice.
British music magazine Uncut calls her "the best British singer-songwriter of the last 10 years...and then some." Q Magazine, another big British music mag, went for "Britain has spawned very few world class singer songwriters, Gilmore is in a league of her own."
In her late 20's, she's been releasing albums for almost ten years now, but a succession of label changes has meant she hasn't been very well marketed, so she hasn't had wide exposure outside England. Despite being noted as a songwriter, perhaps the most-heard song she's done is actually a cover, her version of Cover Me on the Bruce Springsteen tribute album Born To Run a few years ago:
http://www.seeqpod.com/music/?q=thea+gilmore+cover+me. I'm a big Springsteen fan, but her's is about a million times better: jazzy, soft, and slow, it's a plea much more fitted to the lyrics than the Boss' poppy track.
She's worked with Steve Earle, Beth Orton (another under-appreciated British female singer/songwriter), Joan Baez, The Waterboys, and most recently supported the Cowboy Junkies in London.
I couldn't find many of her best songs on Youtube or Seeqpod , but I did get two:
This Girl is Taking Bets (err, over a montage from Veronica Mars is the best I could find, sorry)
Movie Kisses
Others include Razor Valentine, The Things We Never Said, Gun Cotton, Benzedrine, and Apparition #13. Lots of samples on iLike, as there is for everything:
http://www.ilike.com/artist/search?a...mp;x=0&y=0.
Her site is
www.theagilmore.net, and Myspace at
http://www.myspace.com/theagilmore.