SXSW 2012

When Mexican vocalist Ximena Sariñana (hi-MEN-a sa-rin-YAH-na) released her debut solo album, Mediocre, in 2008, Rolling Stone gave it four stars and praised it as “one of the strongest debuts from a female singer-songwriter since Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me.” Recording the Spanish-language album was a natural step for Sariñana, who had risen to fame in her homeland as a child actress and had fronted a successful indie band for four years. “In Mexico, people believed in me as an artist,” says the fully bilingual 25-year-old. So when she began thinking about recording an album in English she was confronted with a tough decision: “Either stay in my country, where everyone knows who I am, or start from scratch and convince people that I’m worth it.” She chose the latter.