Pay attention! This is a chap’s face you’ll be seeing a lot more of. But not nearly as much as his voice. Looking like a young Mos Def, but sounding like anything from a battle-worn Delta blues veteran, to a soul-heavy gospel preacher, Willis Earl Beal is a prodigious talent with a desire to be different; “I want to be like the black Tom Waits” he recently told Pitchfork.

Until recently – he’s now signed to XL in the UK and Hot Charity in the US – Beal would sing a song, or draw pictures, for those who wrote or phoned the details on hand-drawn flyers he distributed (how’s that for an antithesis of the modern social media savvy musicians?), he lives with his grandmother, and he recorded a cassette version of his forthcoming debut album, Acousmatic Sorcery, on a $25 Radio Shack mic. Chicago-based singer-songwriter Beal is a genre-hopping, chest-beating talent of undoubted authenticity. This is no Lana Del Ray.

Lo-fi in attitude, lo-fi in sound, Willis Earl Beal’s eclectic style bears a strong resemblance to the criminally underrated Cody Chesnutt, but with tub-thumping blues in place of hip-hop. If he can keep his fast-rising feet on the ground, Willis Earl Beal could well realise his dream of being a ‘black Tom Waits’; god knows we need more stars like this…