It probably doesn't hurt that Montreal songwriter NEeMA has the Leonard Cohen stamp of approval. He even provided the cover sketch for her second album, Watching You Think, and there are tell-tale bohemian traces through out the record that bear his influence, from references to Italian balconies to a love song to her dog Elsa.

Born Nadine Neemeh to parents of Lebanese and Egyptian descent, NEeMA's cafe folk songs are doused with the spirit of a drifter and a dreamer, based on experiences that range from the Arctic to the Middle East, but Escape is less specific in its origins, casting about for shelter and finding it in a someone, and not a somewhere.

Punched up by Bacharach horns that point the way to San Jose and a poppier feel than the breathy romanticism of the rest of Watching You Think, "Escape" is driven by an insatiable yearning that has taken NEeMA from one end of the Earth to the other, before finally landing her back at home, like a guitar-toting Dorothy who knows she can go back over the rainbow any time she likes.

On iTunes: NEeMA / "Escape"