(20 January 2010) Agnès Milewski was born in Knurów, Poland and lives now in Vienna, Austria. People from Austria and all over the world have been impressed her music since bursting onto the scene in 2007 with her first album Pretty Boys and Ugly Girls (Office4Music (Austria) 9 120024 951513, 2007) (review). In 2008 she won the Austrian Newcomer Award. This year Agnès will release her second album Learn to Swim. Watch for our review of the album and exclusive interview with the artist.

Agnès Milewski has been recognized as fine composer and leads the audience simply to another world with her remarkable music. The lyrics show a melancholic, deep and fantastic world in her soul. Her beautiful voice together with a powerful liveband create nothing but an emotional and highly energetic musical experience. With stated influences of Bjork, Charlotte Martin and Tori Amos, Musical Discoveries visitors Agnès' power, intonations and range also produce allusions to Michelle Loose, the singer from Brave and Arise From Thorns.

Agnès provides the lead vocals and piano. Her live band is comprised of Michael Hecht (bass), Michael Leibetseder (drums), Jimi Dolezal (guitar), Jonas Petersen (violin), Laura Pudelek (cello) and Carolin Ratzinger (flute, tinwhistle, backing vocals, keyboards, electronics). Members of the live band also contribute to the artist's debut album. Agnes' website has recently be relaunched to support her new album and is presented in both English and German.

Agnès Milewski is far from being just a simple artist. The Vienna-based Polish singer/songwriter has a little bit of everything: once she's the nice girl from next door, next she's a sensuous woman. For one moment she's young and naive, in the next she's all grown up and wise. Don't be misled by her innocent appearance or her crystal clear voice or her readily accessible and easy-to-sing-along popsongs.

The new offering is a tremendous sixteen track album entitled Learn to Swim (Frog Queen Music (Austria) FQM002, 2009). The album is about stories life has told her. It's about love, loss, religion and sex. Water is the golden thread ever-present throughout the project. Musically, Agnès demands high standards from her listeners. Musical styles of the past 100 years are torn apart, twisted and relentlessly assembled.

Viennese waltz meets heavy metal. Breakbeats meet disco, quite frequently within the same song. In cooperation with her producer Michael Hecht, she consciously refrains from using the widely known cliches connected to the traditional singer/ songwriter. On the one hand this makes it hard to categorise Agnès Milewski, but on the other hand, this is what makes her unique.

Thousands of clicks on Agnès’ homepage and Myspace-Site, and numerous positive CD and concert reviews bear witness of the high quality of her music as well as her live-performance of the project. Her compositions are healing one's soul. It's good to listen to a musician who knows her compositorial craft, the lyrics are hot and cold, pure creativity, full of puns, quotations and persiflages. The outward appearance of the band and the sound-a powerful entity.

Agnès Milewski knows what she wants and her band knows how to transpose her ideas. The outcome is harmonious and consistent. The musicians have fun on stage and they amuse their audience with little gags–in all perfection they manage to take themselves not too serious.

With Learn to Swim, Agnès Milewski actually learned to swim in this ocean called life, with all its ups and downs. She freed herself from all constraints which where imposed on her by self-proclaimed music-experts and business professionals in the last few years. She has shown strength and will to make the music suiting her whithout running after trends and temporary fashion.

Agnès Milewski has shown that there's definitely more to her music and creativity than shallow pop. That there's much more than the reflection on the surface of the water. Get your copy of the stunning new album at CDBaby here. It is absolutely superb!