mixtape maestro (2.0)

Former Mis-Teeq member (anyone remember this?)-turned-solo R&B-Pop starlet Alesha Dixon may not have big chops to call her own, but she definitely plays to her paper-thin-voiced strengths on the steamy “Italians Do It Better”, a simmering tease that effectively houses her baby-doll purrings against a soft-focus, ’80′s soul soundtrack.

Featured on the Brit’s 2008 release The Alesha Show, the burlesque-y track finds her urging a “Romeo” to dig deep into his bag of kinky bedroom tricks and prove the song title wrong: “Let’s get creative/ Think of all the things we’d like to do and say/ To get syncopated/ Body close to body till we’re harmony”, she breathe-sings, later asserting that “Everything I want I get” as the production cooks up a lush disco-meets-Motown midtempo groove that George Michael would’ve blue-eyed-soul-crooned to back in his heyday.

Is it enough to plop Dixon in the forefront of anyone’s “one to watch” ’09 pop radar? Not exactly, but it’s a sexy lil’ guilty pleasure nonetheless.

DL: “Italians Do It Better” (alt)