Sam Obernik, the unmistakable voice behind Tim Deluxe’s hit single ‘It Just Won’t Do’, releases her stunning debut single ‘Mr Butterfly’ on May 12 through eastwest Records. ‘Mr Butterfly’ is taken from Sam Obernik’s debut album Stellify, which will be released on May 19. Sam’s solo material, in its scatting, ironic way, reaches deep into emotional territory, charting the highs and grizzly lows of love and life, and comes out the other side as a bunch of sexy, hypnotic rallying calls. The vocal and sensibilities conjure up everything from a tousled Ricki Lee Jones to Maria Muldaur, Ani DiFranco, even a soupçon of Cerys.

Sam Obernik grew up in Dublin where, at the age of 15, she started busking - Prince, the Stones, country airs - around Temple Bar with a group of mates. “It was a wall of sound, and we’d annoy the shit out of the fishmonger because we used their big marble doorway, brilliant for acoustics.”

Leaving school at 16 with a paltry 10 O-Levels, Sam moved into bedsitland and waitressing. By day, she’d be writing music. At night, however, she organised the bar at Dublin’s Wildebeest club – “A mad place with dead animals on the walls. They had live everything, from live comedy to live sex. I was knee-high to a duck’s arse, dressed in next to nothing, and practically running the place.” After a brief singing stint in LA with friends who’d been in Alan Parker’s movie The Commitments, Obernik moved to London, married, and found herself touring with Terry Hall. She toured until she was five months pregnant and then settled down to be a mum.