The 26-year-old Washington singer has a voice so full and rich it rivals k.d. lang's and Gillian Welch's. Elton John recently sent flowers and wine to her tour bus.

And her songs have been all over the hit-making and wildly popular prime time hospital soap, Grey's Anatomy.

Her far-reaching, melodic country twang has the capacity to make you stop whatever it is you're doing and just listen. And her songs -- most of which she writes herself -- often sound more like the product of a hard-living bar veteran than that of a slightly shy and polite woman who lives in the woods of Washington.

For the better part of her childhood, Carlile wasn't aware there was music beyond the likes of Tammy Wynette and Patsy Cline. It wasn't until she heard someone do an Elton John cover at a venue where she regularly performed that she realized there were singers who also wrote their own songs.

"That was, for me, a totally different kind of music than what I'd been exposed to and I was totally freaked out," she said.

"I went to the King County library the next day and took out two Elton John records. By reading the liner notes and falling totally in love with Elton John, I realized that he wrote his own songs. That had never occurred to me."

Earlier this year, Elton himself heard that Carlile had been publicly gushing about him and sent her flowers and a bottle of wine from the year she was born as a thank you.

"I couldn't believe it," she said, chuckling about it. "I was supposed to be on stage in 10 minutes and I had to go on 20 minutes late just to get myself together."

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