Sophie Auster - Red Weather

It probably doesn't hurt that 25-year-old Brooklyn singer/songwriter/actress Sophie Auster has a few genetic things going in her favor. Her dark-eyed, model-ready good looks for one, her famous literary parents -- Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt -- for another. But Auster has worked to carved out her own career in music and her new EP Red Weather (November 13), arriving nearly a decade after she recorded her first, indicates she's put all that time -- and experience -- to good use. Auster has embraced writing and performing, working with legendary guitarist and songwriter Barry Reynolds (Marianne Faithful, Rufus Wainwright) and laying down her own self-produced tracks. "I think that I gravitate towards something that’s a little bit more gritty," she says of her new songs. "I always wanted to get some kind of dirty thing in the music. I wanted my voice to contrast some of the musicality of the songs." While Auster gets her musical pulse racing on "Wicked Word" and the Fiona-Apple-ish "Run Run Run", we're drawn to the more subtle, smoldering ways of "Square Moon", a track penned by Reynolds and Antony Hegarty, and the chamber pop grace of "Pretend Song".

Sophie Auster - "Wicked Word" (from the Red Weather EP)

Sophie Auster - "Run Run Run" (from the Red Weather EP)