PRESCILLA (Single)
Out 26 February; The Echo Label

Natasha Khan was never going to grow up normal. Born into a renowned squash-playing dynasty and with mercilessly strict religious parents, she took it upon herself to pray to the aliens when her father upped and left when she was 11. Makes a bit of a change from the normal preteen activities of rolling up your school skirt and storming off to bed without eating your greens. It was then a short leap from taking a life-changing trip to San Francisco, qualifying as a nursery-school teacher, and making odd sound installations at art school, to the Brighton-based 27-year-old's current line of business: that of a storytelling conjuroress with a predilection for handclaps, gold warpaint and dressing in Joni Mitchell's gothic sister's offcuts.

Over the past year, Khan has morphed from a quirky indie footnote into one of British music's ones to watch - she's not just a freaky face, but a musical force to be reckoned with, and as essential as a trip to the underworld with Fleetwood Mac in one of their darker moods. Their much darker moods. She's already enchanted the likes of Björk, Thom Yorke and Devendra Banhart, and you'll be the next to fall under her wicked spell if you don't watch your back.

Rather fantastically, the video to her last single, the quaking yet wraithlike and chuffing fantabulous 'Prescilla', was shot in the Hollywood Hills' Bronson Caves. The Bronson Caves were manmade in the early part of last century, and have since been used as a filming location for everything from The Lone Ranger, Star Trek and Little House On The Prairie, to a number of monster B-movies - Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and Teenagers From Outer Space included - and most recognisably in the classic Adam West Batman series, as, of course, the mighty Batcave.

'Prescilla' is one of a series of glittering highlights on Khan's debut album, Fire And Gold, a record that is equal amounts wide-eyed wonder and shrewd insight, and which sounds creepier than a night in a rickety haunted house with nowt but Jimmy Saville and the Krankies for company. If you want spinechilling Shangri-Las, Khan offers the implausibly potent 'What's A Girl To Do?'.

Or if it's the aural equivalent of a cold night cantering across the Yorkshire moors circa 1876 you're after, try 'Horse & I', the album's opener. To top it all, she's even covered Bruce Springsteen's smasher 'I'm On Fire' as a B-side to this single. A genius in witch's clothing.