JONES may have a common (and almost entirely un-Internet-searchable) moniker, but the sultry East London soul singer is about to make a name for herself on both sides of pond, judging from the stunning performances she gave in Yahoo Music’s Austin living room at South by Southwest this year.

Already adored by the likes of Sam Smith (who tweeted an F-bomb-embellished endorsement of her stunning EP, Indulge), Calvin Harris (who praised her delicate cover of his “How Deep Is Your Love”), and Jools Holland (who invited her to give a career-launching performance on his BBC program Later…), the 25-year-old chanteuse is definitely one to watch.

It seems JONES, whose full name is Cherie Jones, is an old soul who was raised on old soul. “I grew up with just myself and my mother. She was a big soul music-lover; she couldn’t sing, but she always playing reggae, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross, just loads of old classics. So I kind of fell in love with music from such a young age, like singing along in the car,” she recalls. Later, she starting
practicing in her bedroom, “trying to sing Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston songs,” but by age 15 she was taking music more seriously, “training up my voice, just trying to find my own style. And when I was 16, I started writing, kind of turning diary entries into songs.”

Among those “diary entries” is the sumptuous, slow-burning “Indulge,” which JONES says “is about that feeling when you know that you’re becoming obsessed by something, and you shouldn’t really let it take over, but you just really want to. You can’t stop thinking about it, and it’s quite addictive.” Another buzz-garnering early single is the haunting, electronica-tinged “Hoops,” which is “about realizing that you’re doing too much in relationship.”

With her shy and sweet demeanor, it’s hard to imagine JONES actually being comfortable making her journal pages such public record, but she says, “Weirdly, it just feels really natural. I mean, I probably wouldn’t walk up to a stranger and say, ‘This is what happened in my last relationship!’ But when you’re onstage… I don’t know, you just kind of connect with the audience, and it feels really organic and free.”

It would be easy to categorize JONES (whose full name is Cherie Jones) alongside other confessional British soul stylists – everyone from the mid-2000s’ Amy Winehouse and Duffy to Paloma Faith, Jessie Ware, and of course Sam Smith and Adele – but she doesn’t consider herself part of a larger U.K. movement. She just thinks this sort of music timeless. “There’s always going to be a need and hunger for sort of modern soul… There’s something about that pure emotion and love songs that always connects with people,” JONES says. “So I think there’s always going to be a place for the type of music that I’m doing.”

JONES’s full-length debut album, New Skin, will be out later this year.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.