" data-original-title="" title="">Ella Fitzgerald and talented but neglected Peruvian singer Yma Sumac. “I was really shocked by this music. The melodies felt like something from the East," Hindi remembers. “How could that happen, I asked myself. When I heard jazz, I started to sing in English, but mix in Arabic and Berber melodies. It was a game at first, to associate things that didn't fit. But jazz revealed to me that they can go together."

Hindi's experience mixing East and West deepened when she moved to France as a young teenager, at her father's insistence, to pursue her education. By age 17, she had dropped out, taking a job as a guard at the Louvre. When she wasn't studying the paintings (Hindi is also an painter whose exuberant work appears in the CD booklet), she sang. “I was singing in the big rooms in the Louvre," she recounts. “Some days there wasn't anybody around but we still had to guard the objects. I would practice with that big reverb, that big sound, and art all around."

Other sounds-particularly American funk and hip hop-also began to seep into Hindi's voice, which can move easily between soul-inflected purrs and growls, and a gentle, clear resonance. For a decade, Hindi worked with French R&B and hip-hop artists, studied operatic and jazz voice, and played with Parisian Middle Eastern groups. But none of it felt quite right.

“I was frustrated. I was playing in jazz clubs and I think it was a bit odd for them. I didn't want to do covers; I wanted to improvise and use my Arabic influences. But I started to lose friends," she reflects. “So I went to meet people doing hip hop. It was the same. I wasn't into the samples. I went to the Arabic scene. But it was the same again. Those boxes didn't interest me. I wanted to do my music."

Hindi began to fantasize about recording not in the sterile studio environments she saw as a back-up singer, but in a place “where I could make food and really live." Her moment came after a few intense sessions with long-time collaborator Romain Vaugeois at his home studio, which resulted in “Beautiful Tango," a sweet, folksy ballad that sways between darkened club and sunny shore. It became an unexpected hit that earned her both critical praise and the resources to make a debut album her way.

“One of the biggest challenges for me has been as a producer," she muses. “Most producers in France are men, and they have ideas they want you to conform to. I had my own vision." This vision involved renting a two-story apartment/studio, where Hindi ate, slept, and recorded late into the night. “I took three weeks just getting used to the space," she recalls. “I wanted to feel the spirit of the place." The spirit wove itself into tracks like “Trying," which uses passing police sirens, and in the sighing of a water heater in the kitchen.

The improvised, handcrafted feel reverberates throughout Handmade, giving the album an open, organic, up-close quality. It shines through on tracks like “Set Me Free," which sounds like Erykah Badu and early Tina Turner shimmying their way over the Atlas Mountains. The layered percussion includes a performance by Hindi's inventive mom, who suggested they use plastic bags to get just the right sound.

Hindi shifts merrily between Berber and English, between an American vibe and Moroccan soul. “For 'Oursoul' (Bygones) and 'Imik si mik' (Little by Little), Romain, who's a big fan of

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