iSound

The sad clown has been a key figure in pop culture since Billie Holiday, but few 21st-century singers and songwriters know better than Jane Carrey the way the tears of a clown also have the power to make people smile. With the Jane Carrey Band, this guitar-playing chanteuse has been showing Southern California audiences the beauty in melancholy for about two years now. The quartet's forthcoming debut album brings the sophistication and smoldering expressiveness of jazz to the passion and tunefulness of folk-tinged alternative rock. "I kind of grew up in a family of carnies," says Jane, the daughter of Golden Globe-winning actor and comedian Jim Carrey. "I definitely think I inherited that trait." With fluttering vocals and lyrics wiser than her mere 21 years of age, Jane's music steps confidently out from her father's footsteps and into the center ring. She sings of streetwalkers and innocents, death metal bands and spies, love lost and love found, and of cour...