Céu

It’s easy to get swept off your feet by Céu. Yes, she’s easy on the eyes, but the Brazilian chanteuse’s willowy voice is what’s most intoxicating when taking in her tranquil, cross-pollinated pop confections. Born Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças, the Grammy-nominated singer knows how to submerge listeners in breezy loungetronica without overloading on slick cosmopolitan excess.

Céu’s second album, 2009’s Vagarosa, splices and dices pan-Caribbean rhythms and jazz, folding them into chilled-out concoctions, her voice oozing over electro dub and samba-flecked pop. Her exquisite enunciations roll off her tongue in a provocative prance of thick Portuguese syllables. And though she clearly takes inspiration from contemporary soul crooners, it’s decidedly more Sade than Beyoncé. That same soothing reserve made her the first international artist picked up by Starbucks’ Hear Music arm.

As she coos in a calm, airy alto, that detachment underscores a musical maturity. Though she’s barely 30, the São Paulo native sings as if she’s been in the game for decades, tastefully forgoing the kind of overscored production favored by another South American siren, Bebel Gilberto. That’s not to say there isn’t room for both: If bossa nova legacy Gilberto is an aural aphrodisiac, Céu is the postcoital cigarette.

• More Music articles