If sex were a genre of music, Jette Kelly might be the John Lennon, Madonna and Etta James of the style all rolled into one. The 27-year-old songstress has the song-writing prowess, sex appeal and voice to back both of them up.

Last year, Jette teamed up with local electronic producer Holmes Ives for a Frou Frou meets Massive Attack meets Goldfrapp one-off project under the name Jette-Ives. An Emerson graduate, Jette spent most of 2005 and 2006 bouncing back and forth between her hometown of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, an apartment in Manhattan and DC for gigs and recording.

After releasing the Jette-Ives disc “In the Deep,” Jette decided it was time to strike out on her own and pursue a jazzier and less synthesized route for her music. She brought together a new group of backup musicians that reads like a who’s who of the DC music scene including Alexia Kaufmann from Soft Complex, Kathleen Thomas from The Sentiment and Will Waikart from Politicks, among others. Jette has spent the last few months working on new material with the band and just performed her first two shows with the new lineup this past month, one of which was at The Rock and Roll Hotel.

At first glance up on stage, Jette looks like a red dress-wearing femme fatale straight out of a Humphrey Bogart movie. Her dark hair is bobbed and wears a piercing gaze. The only reminder that you're still in 2007 is the flowery purple dress. When she looks into the crowd, you follow her eyes and expect to find Dick Tracy sitting at a dark table in the corner watching her over the collar of his bright yellow jacket. What gives Jette away, however, is her smile. She smiles and laughs to herself mid-song and between songs, revealing a generally carefree attitude. This is not a lady who takes herself too seriously.

The music, although as sexy as it was during her tenure in Jette-Ives, is markedly different. Out with the synthesizers and drums loops and in with the soothing cello, viola and bass. Although the instrumentalization is tight, they fade a bit into the background as Jette begins to croon, intoning what borders on the sounds of physical pleasure into her vocalizations.

Visit Jette Kelly online at: www.jettekelly.com

Questions for Jette Kelly

Jette isn’t your birth name, is it?
No, Bridgette is my birth name. I changed it to Jette. It was like 10 years ago. Oh my God, that’s dating me... One of my best friends, Jordan, she’s the one who named me Jette actually. She said I was “Bad Jette” instead of Bridgette because I was always skipping class, specifically ethics class.

Your music is incredibly sexy, plain and simple. When working on a song, do you ever think to yourself, “How can I tweak this so people will really want to get it on while listening to it?”?
No, not really. I wrote my part of the Jette-Ives album mostly at The Yellow Brick Bank, which is a little, beautiful bar in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. I sat in my favorite seat. I’d write the lyrics on napkins and be drinking my scotch, and I’d be going down what I refer to as my “spiral staircase.” One takes me halfway down, and two takes me all the way down, and then it all makes sense, and I’d be like, “I know exactly what’s going on now.” But I have had sex to my album. It used to be a prerequisite to joining the old band before I had this band. It was like, “You have to have sex to the album at least once. You have to.”

Isn’t it awkward getting it on while listening to your own voice?
Yeah, it was. Actually, I stopped because I realized, “Oh shit! I didn’t write this album about you, but I’m having sex with you, so we should probably stop because it’s not about you."

What song(s) makes you want to get it on?
Chris Isaaks’ “(Baby) Did a Bad, Bad Thing.” Just because.

You’ve got some work coming up with Peter DiStefano from Porno for Pyros and Hybrid. Tell us about it.
I opened for him at the 9:30 Club. Coming from West Virginia, I grew up with the 9:30 Club being THE club to go to. And it was the second show for Jette-Ives and we got the call asking if we wanted to open for Hybrid. Pete came up to me after first song, shook my hand and said, “Hey.” We decided to stay in touch. Our third phone call in, he said, “You want to do an album together?” and I said, “Yes, yes, and yes!” It’ll be great because he’ll let me be as punchy or raunchy or aggressive or sexed out or scotched out as I want to be.

Be honest, what’s your biggest musical guilty pleasure?
I don’t really listen to much music, especially when I’m writing an album because I’m afraid that stuff will leak into it like influences, so i don’t go there.When my bandmate Jimmy picked me up for the show tonight, I had 99.5 turned on. That’s filled with guilty pleasures. I told him I could sing the words to almost any of the songs that came on. Oh God, that’s on tape.

Plug another local musician or band or two:
I’m a fan of The Vita Ruins. I love MDR (Middle Distance Runner). I love Ian (Glinka) in MDR. I love Telograph. And Andy (Boliek of Telograph) is a much more gentlemanly front man than I am.

What else is in your CD player or on your iPod at the moment?
Eva Cassidy. God, her song “Dark End of the Street," her work with Chuck Brown, her solo work, her folk work, her blues work. All of it.

You’ve done a bit of work in the DC area but have lived in New York for the last few years until recently. How have the two scenes compared for you?
D.C. is very supportive, and Manhattan is just great. We played our first show there two weeks ago at The Knitting Factory. The D.C. scene is a smaller scene so everyone knows everybody. If they don’t know one another, they know of one another. The scene here is very supportive and close knit. So many people you know come out to shows here. I saw The Alphabetical Order here tonight and The Vita Ruins and The Sentiment were here tonight, and I only walked through the crowd once, mind you. That doesn’t happen in New York.

Time for the lame, cliche final question: What do you have cooking for the future?
I’ve got to extend our set. We’ve only been together a few months, but we start going into the studio in September. I have to keep writing songs. There will be an album or EP probably in February or March 2008. Thievery Corporation and I started to work on a jazzy, loungey song, but they’re doing their album stuff right now and then we’ll see what we do with that. Pete and I- Pete is so busy. He just wrapped up work on Macy Gray’s album and Tricky’s album. But we’re going to be working together soon.