A CLEAR VIEW.

In November, EMI Music held a listening party in Paris to celebrate the French release of "Nolita," the new album by the Israeli-Dutch singer and songwriter Keren Ann, who is thirty. (The album will be released here in March.) Before leaving for the party, Keren Ann showed me her sixth-floor flat, in Montmartre. It is a small, bisected space that she uses for making music, sleeping, and smoking. A pile of magazines covers the unused gas stove and digital recording equipment fills the tiny living room. Keren Ann recorded most of "Nolita" in this apartment; the rest was done in Nolita itself, in a studio space that she rents on lower Broadway.

"In New York, you pay for the neighborhood," she said. "In Paris, you pay for the view."

The view from her window could have served as the opening scene of a light romantic comedy: the tin roofs of Montmartre gone blue in reflected moonlight; the twinkling Eiffel Tower, topped by a revolving searchlight. If Audrey Tautou wasn't lurking adorably around a corner, it is hard to imagine where she was.

Keren Ann's music is like that view: a cliche stood up straight and done so well that you remember why it became a cliche. Every college student who feels a little sad and sits down with an acoustic guitar to summon beauty and form hopes, whether or not she knows it, to come up with one of Keren Ann's songs. This, unfortunately, is not what usually happens. Right now, at a cafe somewhere, a guitar player is pouring out his acoustic vision in front of helpless diners who, bereft of legal protection, are silently praying for the robots to take over. Keren Ann doesn't make you wish for these things.

Last summer, Keren Ann played a series of dates in New York to support her luminous third album, "Not Going Anywhere," which was released here in August. Its aims are modest and it stakes out well-known ground, but it is the album I listened to more than any other in 2004. I reached for it over and over, as if it were a glass of water. (Her first two CDs, both sung in French, were released only in France.)

Originally recorded for Keren Ann's own amusement, "Not Going Anywhere" was not intended for release, in France or anywhere else. After changing her mind and releasing it on Capitol in France, Keren Ann made the contractually obligated rounds in the United States, to allow the American labels in the EMI family the right of first refusal. To her surprise, Blue Note decided to release the album. It shouldn't have been surprising. "Not Going Anywhere" is well and truly written--a generosity at a time when technology makes it easy to release an album that is more wish than act. Every change and sound on "Not Going Anywhere" flows naturally out of what precedes it. Like a series of epigrams, the music has a masterly brevity: when the information runs out, so does the song. The singing is quiet but drives the arrangements. It's the work of someone who has learned what she's good at.

In July, I saw Keren Ann perform with a pianist, a guitarist, a violinist, and a trumpeter at Joe's Pub. She wore bluejeans and a short-sleeved blue blouse covered in small white dots. Her bangs ended precisely above her eyes, and she smiled often, though she seemed unconcerned about whether anyone liked her. Before singing the album's title song, she announced, "This is not a love song. None of these are love songs."