4 To Watch: Jesca Hoop

Songwriting Survivalist

Hometown: Los Angeles
Fun fact: In the course of finding herself artistically, Hoop wound up in northern California, working for five years as a nanny to the children of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. The couple helped put her back on creative track.
Why she's worth watching: Her debut Kismet feels like a feral child emerging from the Top 40 forest, brimming with loopy, acrobatic vocals, ethereal off-kilter melodies and lovably eccentric lyrics. Kickoff single “Summertime” even features a crow cawing along amid its yodelly fluff.
For fans of: Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Devendra Banhart

In casual dress, Hoop often favors a huge fur hat she inherited from her late mother. The hat gives her a fresh-from-the-traplines Kit Carson look—which isn’t too far from her true life story. “I spent a lot of time really off the grid,” says the survival-skill expert, who left home at 15 for a vagabond existence in the American Southwest. “I lived in canvas dwellings a lot—yurts and domes and big army tents, where the walls were really thin and you're really close to the outer world, the air.”

In the great outdoors, Hoop faced every type of threat-- bears, bulls, wild boars, even giant wood rats that had infested her log cabin. “I have a lot of rat stories,” she sighs. “But the scariest thing you can come across in the wilderness if a random human being, someone you just didn’t expect to be there.”

Eventually, she became a counselor in the Anasazi program, “where you spend half the year outside, walking kids through mountain ranges without trails, only topographical maps, and no lighters—you have to make ﬁre with sticks.” All the while, she was wishing for a mentor to teach her the songwriting ropes. Then: Voila! Recognizing a kindred spirit, Waits and Brennan took her in, and childcare soon morphed into an internship. Through them, Hoop's spacey "Seed Of Wonder" reached KCRW DJ Nic Harcourt, whose constant spins helped her land a deal with 3E/Red Ink Records.

Now, except for the fur cap, “I feel pretty urban,” reckons the 32-year-old singer. “It’s been a while since I lived so extremely, and I’m not MacGyver. And the only calluses I have on my hands at the moment are on my ﬁngertips, from the strings of my guitars.”