Just one year after moving to Los Angeles to jump-start her music career, Dutch singer/songwriter and pianist Laura Jansen recorded her debut EP, the five-song Trauma. Frequent appearances around L.A. earned her a growing fan base that stretched across North America, and in August, 2007 one of her songs, "Soljah," made it onto one of the episodes of MTV's Newport Harbor, a series based on the successful Laguna Beach show. In 2009, her Single Girls EP would be released in Holland. That same year, the rest of the world received Bells, an album that combined her two previously released EPs and added a newly recorded cover of Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody." Jansen's second full-length studio album, the dreamy, beat-driven Elba, was produced by English songwriter and producer Matt Hales (Aqualung) and released in early 2013. ~ Marisa Brown