With some justification, Alina Simone is frequently compared to P.J. Harvey and Cat Power, among other emotive female rock singers unafraid to bellow. Pretty much every review of "Placelessness," her full-length debut, mentioned at least one of those reference points. But it's going to be a lot more difficult to make shorthand comparisons for Simone's next project: "Everyone is Crying Out to Me, Beware," an album of songs by the late Russian singer/poet Yanka Dyagileva.

"I see this album as culmination of a big effort to reclaim my Russian heritage," says the Russian-born Simone, whose family immigrated to America when she was an infant. "My parents did not want me to do this at first. Now they're on board, but they were absolutely opposed to me going over there the first time. We're political refugees, so it's not cool in my family to go back."

For Simone, going back involved a career change to international development and a job that took her to deepest Siberia in 2001. Much research followed, and a grant to record the Yanka album. The fact that a supportive record label is releasing it is a nice bonus.

"I'm really excited my label is releasing this and actually doing some promotion," Simone says. "They could just quietly put it out and hope I go back to singing in English again very soon. The first conversation I had with them, I'd just gotten the grant to do it. I'd had a deal fall through for 'Placelessness,' and it took me a year to find another label. So when they asked about future plans, I said, 'I'm gonna do a record in Russian.' What sold me on them was how interested they were in it. I figured it would sit in my desk drawer and be something my family would really enjoy."

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