Like category-defying artists Joni Mitchell, Cassandra Wilson, and Abbey Lincoln, songwriter Bett Butler refuses confinement to formula, drawing from progressive jazz, earthy blues, Brazilian music, and traditions of chamber music and art songs. In her latest release, MYTHS & FABLES, she follows an offbeat assortment of characters: an artist who dreams of flying beyond the stifling domesticity demanded by her lover, small-town residents still reeling from a generations-old suicide, a saucy broad demanding equal satisfaction in the bedroom, an angel in a dog suit.

“Butler is a unique package," writes John Swenson of United Press International. "Her voice, a smooth, slightly husky alto that can slide up to thrilling high notes, has a comfortable, soothing timbre; but she changes attitudes from song to song with the facility of a trained actor....I marveled at the spell this singer could weave....Bett Butler brought me to that place where music can salve the deepest wound, mend the heart most broken.”