Catherine Feeny would like to have you believe she's Miss Average. She grew up in Philadelphia listening to Simon & Garfunkel and Cat Stevens. She writes alone on her guitar or at the piano and doesn't use a whole load of chords.

She's pretty straightforward, not one of those real leftfield characters like Nick Cave or something. "So, y'know, the universal experiences - like falling in love, or having your heart broken, or lying or being lied to - I just write about those the best way I can."

But there's something about this 29-year-old singer-songwriter from Philadelphia that's stirring more than average interest. Support slots with Martha Wainwright and Suzanne Vega have stood her in good stead over here. Meanwhile she had a smash hit on American iTunes after Mr Blue, a slice of breezy, brass-assisted melancholy written on parting with her boyfriend, featured in Gwyneth Paltrow's Running With Scissors and on teen TV hit-maker The OC.

"I think it's just a really simple, straightforward lyric that people identify with," she says. "Everyone's been the person who feels down and everybody's been the person who's trying to cheer up the person who feels down. Lots of people write to me and say, You must've been writing that song about me, I'm Mr Blue'. It's a lot lighter than the other songs on the album."

Feeny never saw the The OC episode for herself because she's having problems getting television reception in Norfolk. Yup, that's right, Norfolk. Having grown up in LA, where she wrote about FX for a movie trade magazine by day and gigged at The Hotel Cafe by night, last year Feeny moved to wet and windy East Anglia after meeting producer Sebastian Rogers.

"I came over to England to do a bit of recording in his studio in Norfolk and it turned from a small project into an album," she says, "so I just ended up staying. His studio's in a little village called Windfarthing. It's an old mill. Well, the bottom of an old mill - the top blew off years ago. It's lovely to be out in the countryside, you really have this space to create. And in the winter you can take solitary walks though the frozen fields in-between takes."

Released last year, Feeny's second album, Hurricane Glass, is a smooth exercise in introspective pop.

"It's an outlet," she says of her songwriting. "If I don't write for a long time I do end up feeling kind ofconstipated."

  • For review, see The Argus on September 15
  • 8.30pm, £9, 01273 647100