Brandi Carlile

There's a place in love and heartbreak where the bad starts to feel good, an almost exquisite melancholy in which the thought of feeling "better" is almost worse than the beautiful, gut-wrenching pain. This place is where Brandi Carlile makes her home. The singer-songwriter's third album doesn't break the mold she created the first two times: alt-country-drenched folk-rock explorations of relationships (plus the Elton John collabo "Caroline"). Like before, her rich, nuanced voice and smart, poignant songs will break your heart over and over. And then you'll ask her to do it again.