Sol Seppy is, even once you’ve become familiar with her work, something of a mystery. Once you hear this singer-songwriter with the tongue twister name (try saying “Sol Seppy Sings Songs” seven times fast), you’re run into a complex maze that’s hard to escape. Not that you’d necessarily want to. But take Slo Fuzz, the opening track on her MySpace profile- it starts out sounding like a cover of Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” before it shakes into a head nod trance, focuses to full on rock, and then circles back to the beginning with enough of a dizzying twist that it’s like listening to a whole new song. That’s just the music. Sol, a brunette, occasionally wears the type of platinum blonde bob wig that only the good spies own. And her accent, which is a silky Anglo-Aussie mix, only comes out for about half of the songs. Brit singers usually have to decide whether to play American or go for Cockney broke. Sol makes the enigmatic choice to do both.

It’s a recipe for disaster to try to formulate a thesis of good art, but there’s no doubt that a little tension between concealment and revelation does a good job at drawing any listener in. Bob Dylan hid and revealed himself at the same time with artfully obscure lyrics; those guys in Slipnot say some nasty things, but they wear pretty weird masks too. Sol Seppy who, naturally, uses a pseudonym, hides in her music before letting an electric arpeggio spurt out. Listen to 1 2, which comes from The Bells of 1 2 by Groenland Records- you’ll hear instruments pulsing out an invisible pattern for the first minute and a half, but when the clouds clear Sol and her plain acoustic emerge asking someone or something to just stop and “give her a sign.” The response? The same pulse coupled with Sol’s own voice singing backup, like she’s avoiding answering her own questions.

The animated video to “Wonderland” has the same cryptic hover. The song opens with strings that sound like rubber bands stretched over a shoe box while an obscured bird flaps through blue until becoming visible. All around his wings the world expands to clearer focus, and as the music layers on itself a rag doll body replaces the bird, flapping in the buoyant sky while colors and sounds fizz like bubbles in soda bottles. The transformations continue with sound effects indicating their urgency, but even with the visual cues it’s clear that the confusion behind the images is as important as what they represent. By the time Wonderland finishes with a bug rushing choral finale (of voices and birds), it’s difficult to look away from the screen or stop listening to the song. The room gets so quiet you can hear the microphone hit the chair while someone finds the button to stop recording.

That mystery is a carefully constructed feeling. Not only a singer-songwriter, Sol also served as producer and engineer on her last album. She has a singular vision for how her music should sound. In addition, she’s earned her indie resume helping out Sparklehorse with her classically trained skills on cello and piano. Sol Seppy may be a mystery, but it’s not because she has a lot of questions. By the way, that pseudonym is a sub in for the real, and pretty unpronounceable, name Sophie Michalitsianos. From that fact it’s pretty clear Sol Seppy knows that mystery isn’t merely powerful- a lot of the time, it can just be more fun.

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