CD

Luciana Souza, The New Bossa Nova (Verve). The great Brazilian jazz singer teams up with producer-husband Larry Klein for an album of soft, smooth, infinitely subtle bossa-nova versions of pop songs by the Beach Boys, Leonard Cohen, Alison Krauss, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Sting, Steely Dan, and James Taylor, with Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Waters of March” thrown in for good measure. Don’t be fooled by the easy-listening patina–this is Souza at her most delicate and appealing, and if it should happen to bring her to the attention of the same mainstream listeners who flipped over Madeleine Peyroux’s Klein-produced albums, so much the better for everybody (TT).