Listen: Doe Paoro – Hallelujah [Best Fit Premiere]

New York born singer and instrumentalist Doe Paoro garnered some attention for her debut album last year.

Slow to Love was marked out for its fusion of minimalist post-dubstep production and her unusual and affecting vocal tones.

Well traveled, in recent months she has spent time living and writing in Sweden, and wandering the Himalayas alone, studying a form of Tibetan opera known as the Lhamo. As a Brooklyn native with a thirst for musical exploration, the influences on her forthcoming album are sure to be strange and wonderful. Further reason to be intrigued is the whisper of collaborations with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Peter Moren of Peter Bjorn & John.

Next month Paoro will head to SXSW for a number of live performances but before that, there’s the little matter of this haunting cover of Leonard Cohen’s challenging classic ’Hallelujah’. Challenging in that it’s difficult to make a song everyone’s heard a million times before sound like your own.

The trick here is not to over blow the vocals or rearrange melodies from recognition, from the first hint of Yuri Hart’s delicate cello and as Paoro’s voice rises and falls during the sweeping harmonies of the song, there’s something unsettling and utterly absorbing about the seemingly effortless way it all sounds so simple.