"We don't know why we're here/we don't know why we're really here." Can anyone claim to know why he or she is here surviving within the misery of existence? Fabricating illusions of having a purpose can be easy, but alone at night--when there is nothing but the sound of your breath and the faint noises of urban decay bleeding though the window--the weight of isolation and uselessness can crush the human spirit. So light another cigarette, pick up a guitar, and begin the cathartic experience of vocalizing how this whole world's wild at heart and weird on top.

That is what Chicagoan Maigin Blank does with her music. Maigin's fears are as dense as condensation on a car's windshield in deep winter. So much so that she has not performed live, which is a travesty considering the universality of her lyrics and the emotion with which they are delivered. Not many artists would start a song with "I am so insecure and I am ready to admit." When you consider how this society's media and 5th Avenue advertising elite spend billions of dollars to maintain a perpetual state of mass self-doubt and fear, why not? Maybe admitting it is the first step toward recovery, and if so, Maigin Blank is ahead of the game.

MP3.com caught up with Maigin at SMT Studios in Manhattan, where she is recording not one but two albums. The album material differs greatly from the exclusive acoustic sets MP3.com captured. With amplification, drums, and vocal multitracking, Maigin's songs breathe and expand themselves into gorgeous moonlit Americana similar to the sound that made Mazzy Star a household name more than a decade ago.

Be sure to watch Maigin's exclusive sessions here and download MP3s here.