There’s no reason Alex Bosworth couldn’t go as far as she wants in the music industry.

Her persona is warm and accessible, and her voice follows suit—it combines the sultry languor of Norah Jones with Sarah MacLachlan’s angelic reassurance, a touch of Paula Cole’s lonesome high end coupled with Alison Krauss’ well-water clarity.

That Bosworth’s debut isn’t on the par of her forbears has less to do with her approach than her depth; as much as you might enjoy slipping into the Sunday-morning regret and gentle irony of “Not About You,” it’s not going to invite comparisons to similarly themed classics like, say, Frank Sinatra’s version of “I Get Along Without You Very Well.”

Likewise, when she claims “I love you, what can I say? / I want you, though it sounds cliche” at the opening of “Smile for Me,” she’s smart enough to add the disclaimer “It’s new to me” before setting the scene with a porch, a guitar, and some wine.

That voice, wisely mixed up front and practically into your brain stem, makes such invitations irresistible, but settings—gorgeously appointed as they are with acoustic bass, mandolin, and Bosworth’s own Fender Rhodes and marimba—are often all you get on “Here for You.”

It all makes for perfectly good third-date background music, but Bosworth’s voice is too precious an instrument to get even this close to twee, and she proves it on deeper tracks like “Prayer”: her delivery of a phrase like “Oh no, I can’t handle this,” for once, says more than mere words.

It’s the kind of soul searching she’s going to have to do to find her own songwriter’s voice, one fresher than “Time is fleeting / And tomorrow is a gift.”

But if she does eventually live up to her own throat, she might become new to all of us, as well.