Leslie Mills got her start as a singer/songwriter with the rootsy pop band To the Moon Alice, which was a brief player in the mid-'90s HORDE festival/granola alternative scene. Though it managed a promising 1997 EP for A&M, shifting corporate tectonics forced To the Moon Alice's hand, and the band folded. Undeterred, Mills began shopping around for a deal of her own. She eventually signed with CAA, landed at Atlantic, and secured an impressive publishing deal with Paul McCartney's MPL Tunes, Inc. Not bad for a woman who had begun jamming with her future To the Moon Alice bandmates during downtime from their day jobs at a national park. In 2002, Mills decamped to Nashville, where she began work on her solo debut with Australian producer and co-writer Chris Pelcer. The album traveled through as many sonic permutations as Mills did studios to record it (Nashville, New York, London, L.A., etc.); when it finally appeared in September 2003, Different for Girls was a lush, lively record blending Sophie B. Hawkins soul with crunchy, highly accessible adult alternative. ~ Johnny Loftus