Once the domain of a starlet who has become something of a trainwreck, the female teenybopper crowd is currently being ruled by an unlikely star in the making.

But while she has just a fraction of the audience Britney Spears enjoyed at her peak, 22-year-old Colbie Caillat is winning over fans with a decidedly different sound. Caillat, who in less than two years has gone from MySpace hopeful to the top of the Billboard charts, makes folk pop steeped in a wide array of influences, including hip-hop and reggae.

Caillat's father Ken produced two Fleetwood Mac albums, and the family's Southern California home was a musical one. But Ken Caillat taught his daughter that if she aspired to be in the family business, she needed to learn to write her own songs.

She did just that, and the result, Coco, has been one of the breakout albums of the year. In the midst of a sold-out tour, Caillat sat down with MP3.com at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma, California, to talk about growing up in a musical family, her overnight rise to fame, ridding herself of stage fright, and the road ahead.