Dane lit the fuse for her rocket to fame

When Danish singer-songwriter Tina Dico arrives in Seattle for a show Thursday night at Chop Suey, she'll be fresh from a tour that stops in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and the South by Southwest music festival and conference in Austin, Texas.

This weekend's annual gathering in Austin, one of the music industry's top events, will further raise the profile of the 27-year-old artist who beat Coldplay and U2 to the top of the charts in her native Denmark last summer.

Her warm, somewhat sultry voice is captivating on such songs as "Losing," "Warm Sand" and the ethereal title song from her third album, "In the Red." The album was recorded last winter in London with producer Chris Potter, who won "best producer" for his work on The Verve's "Urban Hymns" at the Brit Awards and also has worked with the Rolling Stones and Blur.

While growing up in Arhus, Denmark, Dico developed a love for music after her dad, a carpenter, built a music room with huge speakers in the basement. As she became skilled at playing various instruments, she began writing her own songs and recording them on an old reel-to-reel tape recorder.

Her epiphany came when friends asked her to sing with their band and she discovered the powerful feeling of performing in front of an audience.

She won a talent show, which led to a hit single, which led to a recording contract. But after growing impatient with a label's artist development, she started her own label, Finest Gramophone, and released her own debut album. All at age 23.

A second album, "Notes," won a Danish Grammy for best songwriter and the Danish Music Critics Award for best composer. "It exploded in my face," Dico says on her Web site, http://www.tinadico.com.

But it was her vocals on two songs -- "Home" and "The Space Between" -- on Zero 7's second album, "When It Falls," that landed her on the electronic duo's arena tour of Britain and the United States -- a tour she calls "a dream."

"To be able to tour for the first time at that level and play the biggest venues, sold-out gigs everywhere -- amazing," Dico says.

The pace of Dico's career has continued to pick up with "In the Red."

"Music has always been a very big and mysterious part of my life," she says.

"It's definitely my way to feel alive. It feels like you can take the whole world and bring it into your body. It's fair to say that I found my calling."

Opening for Dico at Chop Suey are singer-songwriters Kristin Hoffman and Jen Wood.