Yeah, Larry's right; Nora O'Connor sings with Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire currently (see link below). I first heard her sing at a tribute to Tom Waits, where she did "Up Shit Creek Again", and I loved her voice. I started going to Hoot Night shows, where a bunch of local Chicago folk (including Nora) would do covers based on whatever theme they chose (The Cure VS Diana Ross, for example, where they'd do either a Cure song or a Diana Ross song- the shows were always hilarious). I always dug her voice, and at one Bowl of Fire show, I ran into Rodney Pawlek (manager of Macabre) who said he was a longtime friend of hers. I abused the connection to Rodney and luckily, she agreed to work with ND.
She's done a solo album, but I've only heard 1 song from it- it's on a very small local Chicago label. But you can hear her on the last ABBoF record The Swimming Hour and possibly Andrew Bird's latest cd called Weather Systems (not sure she's on it- haven't heard it yet).
Check the Hoot Night page and scrounge around through there, as there are some free mp3s of Nora among those pages singing live on various covers- including a solo acoustic version of The Cure's 'Six Different Ways'.
Nora's also got an acoustic duo (herself and a guy named Matt Weber) called Cantina who play around Chicago, mostly at the Hideout. Not sure if they're putting a record together or not.
Hope that helps.
http://www.hootnight.com/audio.asp
http://www.bowloffire.com
