Valerie June breaks all the rules by taking on Mazzy Star’s unimprovable song Fade Into You and absolutely nails it.

The golden rule of cover versions is, as ever, don’t mess with perfection. And for me nothing is more perfect than Hope Sandoval singing Fade Into You with Mazzy Star.

And yet… Valerie June just nails it.

She’s far from a household name but I think that’s just because she’s so wildly eclectic that it’s hard to fit her in to a category.

Her style spans every genre and every era – psychedelic folk, country soul, symphonic pop and blues – combining southern roots and northern cosmopolitan charm to earn comparisons with everyone from Billie Holiday and Karen Dalton to Macy Gray and Tom Waits.

As the New York Times once put it: “She is simultaneously rural and cosmopolitan, historically minded and contemporary, idiosyncratic and fashionable, mystical and down-to-earth.”

She’s not exactly obscure either; she has Grammy nominations to her name. Yet when I saw here live, it was at the tiny Green Room in Camden Town, where 40 or 50 of us sat at tables in front of a tiny stage where she sipped Bourbon between songs.

The daughter of a brick cleaner in the flatlands of West Tennessee, she began her career in Memphis at the age of 19 in a husband-and-wife duo called Bella Sun.

When her marriage broke up she left the south and adopted the life of a gypsy street musician, playing for change in bus and subway stations up and down the West Coast before settling back in Memphis.

In time she moved to Brooklyn and teamed up with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, who produced her breakthrough third album, followed by a Grammy-winning duet with soul legend Carla Thomas.

This song comes from a 2022 covers EP featuring interpretations of songs by Nick Drake, Mazzy Star, Bob Dylan, Gillian Welch, and Nick Cave.