Cute quirky actress Zooey Deschanel, 28, has a debut album out with her band She & Him in which she sings folksy music in a kind of sweet country throwback twang. The music is lovely, it’s soft, quaint, wholesome and real. Their sound has an authenticity and purity to it and I was surprised at how both how well and how simply Deschanel can sing.

The NY Times profiled Deschanel’s new band and her move from movies to part-time musician, and journalist Melana Ryzik is as impressed as I was when I heard her sing. Ryzik says that Deschanel seems sincere, unaffected and without the ego that characterizes a lot of actor-musicians. She has indie cred and it’s well deserved:

And unlike the work of other actors-cum-musicians — Russell Crowe’s various pub-rock acts for example — the album doesn’t come across as a vanity project; in person Ms. Deschanel is exactly as indie darling as her fans would hope.

Though she was raised and lives amid celebrity in Los Angeles and has appeared in both hugely popular films (“Elf,” in which she briefly sang) and critical and cult favorites (“Almost Famous,” “All the Real Girls”), it’s easy to imagine her puttering around a cozily decorated Williamsburg loft. She takes home doggie bags, prefers tights to spray-tans and uses David Bowie’s “Changes” as her ring tone. She knits and crochets and makes brownies and gingerbread because, she said, “I like the way people react when you bake, which is, like, just pure childlike joy.”

She has some of that too — an almost hand-clapping glee — when she talks about She & Him. The music has drawn comparisons to 1970s AM radio staples like Carly Simon and Linda Ronstadt. It is unironically, unapologetically pleasant; feel-good nostalgia in the best sense. “It sort of defied some of the preconceptions and prejudices I would’ve had about an actor rock album,” said Amrit Singh, the executive editor of the music blog stereogum.com. He compared it favorably to another buzzy actress-and-indie collaboration, Scarlett Johansson’s forthcoming album of Tom Waits covers, produced by TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek. Mr. Ward and Ms. Deschanel “seemed like a good stylistic fit,” he said.

[From The NY Times via Huffington Post]

Deschanel met her guitarist and producer Matt Ward in 2006 when they worked on a cover of a song together for a small film called “The Go-Getter.” Ward said that he loved her voice and persuaded her to send him some demos she had recorded of original songs. He said Deschanel’s songs “knocked [his] socks off” and their collaboration was born.

Deschanel picked the name for the band, and said she “wanted a name that was very humble, modest and anonymous.”

Here are some videos of the band playing live at SXSW 2008 on March 14. You can hear more of their music on their myspace. If you’re listening and are skeptical at first, give it a chance, it will probably grow on you.

She & Him: Volume One is available on Amazon.com.

Black Hole

Sentimental Heart

You really got a hold on me

Photos are by Christopher Nelson of She & Him’s 6/29/07 performance at KEXP radio station in Seattle, from KEXP’s Flickr.