Download "Hole In The Middle" by Emily Jane White (right-click or control-click to save to your computer)

Sometimes you know you're going to love a song after only hearing one or two seconds of it. That was the case for me when I first listened to "Hole in the Middle" by Emily Jane White. Maybe it's the spare thump of an upright bass paired with a single beat of a rumbling drum, or the strumming guitar that seems to kick up dust down a sun-bleached country road. Or maybe it's the killer recurring line: "Everybody's got a little hole in the middle / Everybody does a little dance with the devil."

Emily Jane White, a San Francisco-based singer-songwriter with a dark streak, has the perfect voice to deliver those lines with conviction — a coarse but beautifully aged alto soaked in rye. "Hole in the Middle" is from her latest CD, the appropriately titled Dark Undercoat, a beautifully produced collection of shiver-inducing songs, and one I'll return to many times this year.

Listen to "Hole in the Middle" by Emily Jane White:

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