ARE squeaky voices great or grating? Do they equate to the sound of chalk snagging on a schoolroom board or do you cherish both Minnie Mouse and Minnie Ripperton?

If the former, please look away now or cover your ears. If the latter, have a high old time in the company of Stina, Cathy and Maria.

In the tradition of British bus transportation, you wait for a squeak for years on end, then along comes harp-playing Joanna Newsom with the high-pitched oddball delight of 2004, to be followed by three more singers whose vocal frequency would attract dogs.

Stina Nordenstam is the Stockholm whisperer, so quiet and child-like in her singing, and her albums have always been moon-lit affairs with the wolves at the door on a frosty night. The World Is Saved points to light at the end of the darkest tunnel - "The good days will come, I just need time", she says at the finale to The End Of The Love Affair - and her beautiful but damaged music has attained new heights. The bowl of cherries must wait, however.

Cathy Davey, is 25, Irish and as spiky and fruity as a prickly pear, and her debut album, Something Ilk, has the originality and punk panache of a Bjork or PJ Harvey. She is sweet and sour, raw and surprising, countering guitars with bursts of kazoo and even a kitchen blender (a variation on the kitchen sink, presumably).

Like Stina, Maria Solheim is Scandinavian, and Frail is the Norwegian's third album still awaiting British discovery. She is 22 but her voice is more blighted bud than rose, an emotional instrument that conveys innocence broken on the wheel of restless craving. As the title suggests, Frail is a diary of fragility, thankfully devoid of the self-pity of red-carpet bed-sit siren Dido.

Updated: 09:01 Thursday, January 06, 2005