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Formed: Though she began playing sparse folk songs in New Haven, Conn., in the early 1970s, Bloom started recording after she met collaborator and avant-garde guitarist Loren MazzaCane Connors in 1976.
Latest release: Thin Thin Line, which is scheduled to drop Feb. 9 on former Red House Painters leader Mark Kozelek's label, Caldo Verde Records.
Why you care: Sometimes all you need as a songwriter is one break. When director Richard Linklater used Bloom's "Come Here" as the song Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy played in an old listening booth in 1995's indie hit Before Sunrise, it introduced the obscure folk singer to a new audience. At the time, most of Bloom's fragile records were out of print and her last work with Connors, 1984's Moonlight, was limited to a pressing of just 300 copies. Since then, artists like Bill Callahan and Devendra Banhart have continually sung her praises, leading to a reissue of her work with Connors and 2009's remarkable double-disc set Loving Takes This Course, which is half covers by Callahan and the Dodos and half archived material like "Come Here" and the haunting, oddly tuned "It's So Hard to Come Home."
Sounds like: The perfect mix of Vashti Bunyan's freak-folk weirdness and the warm, lived-in Laurel Canyon scene.
For fans of: Vashti Bunyan, Bill Callahan, Judee Sill.
SEE IT: Kath Bloom plays Thursday, Jan. 7, at Holocene, with Tom Bevitori and Levi Strom. 8:30 pm. $8. 21+.
WWeek 2015