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Discovered Rai Kamishiro a week ago and ordered her new album on Bandcamp. She's got a nice, cute voice and sings well both in Japanese and English.
http://raikamishiro.bandcamp.com/album/cor-leonis
Nice range of vocal styles and expressions. She can go from mainstream j-pop diva to ultra cute very convincingly, and she does the nasal voice really well. I read a bit of her blog, and she seems like a lovely person.
EDIT: I listened to most of the songs she has up, and unfortunately, the actual composition is pretty bad in most of the songs. There's no actual melodic contour to most of them, with very repetitive melodic lines that have very flat vertical movements (very little changes in the intervals of the notes). There's also no sense of development and structure to the entire melodic contour from the beginning to the end of the songs. The worst part, is that the arrangement actually clashes with the vocal melody quite often, which is extremely unprofessional and grating on the ears when those unintentional dissonant clashes occur, showing a lack of understanding of harmonic structure--which is something all composers/songwriters are supposed to have mastered at the basic level for songwriting.
I suspect that she and her collaborators are the type that messes around with music-making software but haven't actually spent enough time studying the basics of composition, songwriting and arrangement (such as harmonic structure/progression, melodic development, song structure, etc). Now, there are plenty of people out there who are self-taught, but there is a baseline level that you need to rise above to be considered competent, regardless if you are classically trained or self-taught, or what genre you make music in. Her genre is pop, and she and her collaborators have to at least master the basics of pop songwriting/composition/arrangement.
I would love to help her make her music better. I've contacted her to let her know I'm interested in collaborating (I'm a composer/songwriter). (She said she won't be collaborating with her previous collaborator anymore in her blog.)
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Some Asian female singers remind me French ones in naive high-pitched intonations.
I love the stuff Vanessa Paradis did with Lenny Kravitz. I love this song from her:
Your Love's Got A Handle On My Mind:
I can't stand Alizee though--she's not a "singer" to me because her singing is so flat and lacking any technique or expressiveness--she's really just a hot chick that shakes her ass, and her songs are excuses for her to shake it. It's actually hard to find pop singers that sing worse than Alizee. This isn't a subjective comment, but an objective one, disregarding stylistic preference.
And since we're on French female singers, I should mention Coralie Clément, singing in that retro 60's cute French pop style:
Ces Matins D'été:
Kahimi Karie is Japanese, but she's done a lot of French songs, and sings in that similar 60's French pop cute sex kitten style:
Mike Alway's Diary:
She sings in English too:
I'm a fan of Marit Larsen. Such a cute person (she's always so positive and glowing) and cute voice:
I'll wrap up this post with Jillian Aversa singing a song by Zircon (he's video game soundtrack composer/electronic music--they are husband and wife). She's done a lot of vocals for famous AAA video game soundtracks. She's got one of those classically trained voices with very good technique:
Just Hold On (I love the lyrics--very beautiful):
