Growing up in Connecticut and Iowa, Laguna Beach resident Miles absorbed the music heard on her parents’ records: popular stylists such as Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. She also fell in love with Hank Williams and the classic country music played by her uncle. She had a “weakness for the sad stuff, no matter what genre,” she says now. These days, the sultry, deep-voiced Miles tackles everything from Cole Porter chestnuts and Sting’s “Fragile” to songs never designed to be vocalized, like some challenging Thelonious Monk material. “I’ll be working on the two loves of my childhood—jazz and country,” she says. “The moments in between will be spent making the trouble I’ll write about in my songs.”