I ordinarily don't pay much attention to EPs. (If you don't know the term, it means extended-play recordings, usually around 15 to 25 minutes long, half or less the length of a typical CD.) I'm not sure why. I guess it's what you might call an unexamined prejudice. I also am no particular fan of singer-songwriters, especially those grounded mostly in other singer-songwriters. Recently, however, it occurred to me that maybe I ought to write about something different from the usual. So here we go:

A young Austin-based singer-songwriter, Megan Lacy offers up five songs, evidently related, in a mid-tempo, gloom-laden, folk-melody style you will have heard before. What makes Salvation distinctive is Lacy's voice, which effectively accentuates the darkness surrounding the stories she relates, and Justin Douglas's skeletal yet keenly atmospheric production.

Whenever I hear songs like these from singer-songwriters, I assume, fairly or unfairly, that they're autobiographical. I have the uncomfortable sensation one feels on the occasional encounter with a stranger who confides, unsolicited, the most painful secrets of his or her life. At least when one hears the same on a recording, one is not obliged to produce something to say in response. Based in reality or in imagination, Lacy's songs detail wounded relationships, beginning with parents, and the narrator's efforts to heal herself. Though my taste and attention are ordinarily elsewhere, there is no denying that these are capably written and eminently listenable.

As the title implies, Rediscovered consists of remixes of previously released originals. California transplant Dulcie Taylor is an older woman than Lacy, with more miles and entanglements behind her. She's been at the singer-songwriter trade for two decades and more, explicit in acknowledging that her songs are records of her life, happy and unhappy, with lovers and others. If she were not so good at what she does, one might be reduced to a nasty crack about why the rest of us should care about the affairs of someone we don't know and are unlikely ever to meet.

It's the music that carries her career -- for an independent artist she has an impressive fan base -- and one admires her skill and professionalism, not to mention her easy (though surely hard-earned) confidence. Her style is fashioned from what one might call acoustic pop, influenced by jazz and rock with occasional, albeit barely audible, whispers of country.

Taylor has many critic-admirers, and deservedly so. Of the adjectives a listener might use to characterize her approach, though, "roots" is not one of them. Folk and blues are not among her influences. If that matters to you, be warned. If it doesn't, you're likely to be pleased that you discovered Rediscovered.