Angela McCluskey

After leaving the Los Angeles-based indie outfit the Wild Colonials, Glaswegian singer and songwriter Angela McCluskey struck out on her own to release her solo debut, the Nathan Larson-produced The Things We Do, for Manhattan Records in the spring of 2004. That same year, she scored a surprise hit with the song "Breathe," a collaboration with the French electro-pop group Telepopmusik, which gained wide exposure thanks to its use in a television commercial. Though McCluskey possessed a smoky vocal tone that was frequently compared to Beth Orton's, her brand of extroverted pop was far removed from Orton's often gloomy, jazz-inflected trip-hop. McCluskey died on March 14, 2024, at the age of 64.