Mirah

Local favorites Andrew Jackson Jihad once asked, "Why doesn't Mirah come to Phoenix?!" The singer-songwriter (born Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn) has spent the past decade with the Pacific Northwest indie fortress K Records. Whether over the backing of her own acoustic guitar or in collaboration with the likes of Phil Elverum (The Microphones/Mount Eerie), Ginger Brooks Takahashi, and Lori Goldston and Kyle Hanson, she doesn't sing as much as render her delicately sweet voice as amplified whispers. While prolific in penning her own deeply felt paeans to the various emotionally complex levels of friendships and love, Mirah isn't shy about taking the works of others and making them her own. The 2004 album To All We Stretch an Open Arm, with Goldston and Hanson as The Black Cat Orchestra, was forged as an anti-war protest record, spinning the songs of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Kurt Weill, among others, into carefully crafted vehicles of change. 2009's (a)spera continues Mirah's troubadour tradition of conveying a distinctive, meaningful intimacy. Though you might have to share her with a long-awaiting audience, it will still feel as though she's there just for you.