She's the darling of the alt-folk scene with her intimate, beautifully crafted songs about heartbreak and disappointment – it's hard to believe that Laura Marling is still only 19. The buzz about her first began two years ago when early gigs earned her comparisons to Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. All this for a girl who at the time was so young that she was kicked out of one of her own gigs for being underage, but magical first album Alas, I Cannot Swim amazingly lived up to the hype. Her spellbinding, deceptively simple songs have helped turn the folk revival into a phenomenon.

'Simplicity is the key: playing acoustic guitar and singing in a gentle verge-of-womanhood voice, she keeps things homespun and rootsy.' — The Guardian

'The 18-year-old is an old soul in the Baez mould, lending a rollup-rounded timbre to spare, folksy arrangements' — The Times